


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




















TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 










Ten-Minute Sermons 


BY 

. v 

LEWIS H. CHRISMAN 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
WEST VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE 



Willett, Clark & Company 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 


1935 


G 52.^4- 


Copyright 1935 by 
WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY 


Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mass.-LaPorte, Ind. 


A A 

V* 


©Clh 55927 


JUL -6 1936 




CONTENTS 


LARGER MAPS i 

A SUBTERFUGE OF COWARDICE 4 

SILVER WINGS 7 

THE RELIGION OF THE LOWLANDS 10 

FRUITFUL FAILURES 14 

THE GOSPEL OF LIBERTY 18 

REUBEN, THE UNSTABLE 21 

THE MASTERY OF EXTERNALS 24 

AT EASE IN ZION 27 

A BORROWED RELIGION 30 

HOPE FOR THE CASTAWAY 33 

THE TRAGEDY OF DISUSE 36 

SHIMEI, THE SCURRILOUS 39 

TRUTH THROUGH ACTIVITY 43 

WEARERS OF SACKCLOTH 46 

THE LIFE-GIVING RIVER 50 

A DAUNTLESS FAITH 54 

TARRYING AT SEIR 56 

THE INEVITABLE BATTLE 59 

THE FEAR OF TRUTH 62 

THE TRAGEDY OF THE SECOND CHANCE 65 
THE ACID TEST 68 

CLOUDS OF WITNESSES \ 71 

THE PARADOX OF GROWTH 74 

REAL CO-OPERATION 77 

THE NARROW WAY TO THE LIFE 
ABUNDANT 80 

THE GRASSHOPPER COMPLEX 83 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


SWORDLESS VICTORIES 86 

PUZZLING ADVICE 89 

AN INADEQUATE RIGHTEOUSNESS 92 

THE SCHOOL OF SOLITUDE 95 

THE GOSPEL OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT 98 

FEARING THE HEIGHTS 102 

TWILIGHT TREMBLINGS 105 

LANGUAGE AND MORALS 108 

UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE 111 

INVESTMENTS 114 

PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT 117 

THE HIGHER LAW OF COMPENSATION 120 
FACING SODOM 122 

LIVING PEACEABLY 125 

A BLOTTED RECORD 128 

PERENNIALLY NEEDED COUNSEL 132 

HANDICAPPING BONDS 135 

THE TYRANNY OF THE PAST 138 

THE VISIBILITY OF SIN 141 

SOLIDARITY 144 

THE FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT 147 

THE BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 150 

THE PAULINE PARADOX 154 

THE PRIMACY OF THE SOUL 157 

ENEMIES OF JESUS 160 

THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN 163 

THE GRACE OF ADAPTABILITY 166 

THE INNER COMPULSION 170 

THE PASSION FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS 173 

AN INCLUSIVE PRAYER 176 

THE PARABLE OF THE SWINDLING 
MANAGER 179 


CONTENTS 


MAKING A GOOD RECORD 182 

TWO SOURCES OF STRENGTH 186 

THE TWELVE 190 

THE HIGHER LAW OF SERVICE 193 

BLIND GUIDES 196 

THE PRE-EMINENCE OF HUMAN VALUES 200 
WRONG BALANCES AND SHORT 
WEIGHTS 204 

THE STUFF OF LIFE 207 

OUR LOST SENSE OF SIN 210 

THE HARD-SOILED LIFE 214 

THE MENACE OF THE UNSTABLE 217 

THE CROWDED LIFE 220 

THE GOOD HEARER 223 

THE BASIC VIRTUE OF INTELLECTUAL 
INTEGRITY 226 

A PROSAIC VIRTUE 229 

AFTER THE DELUGE 232 

NEW LIGHT IN A BROADENING LIFE 236 

THE PREJUDICES OF PROVINCIALISM 239 

APPRECIATING THE THINGS THAT ARE 
EXCELLENT 242 























































































































































































































































































































































































































































' ' , ■.: a 












PREFACE 


Several of these “ Ten-Minute Sermons ” first appeared in 
The Homiletic Review and are republished here with the 
kind permission of the editor of that periodical. The rest 
of the material in this volume has not hitherto appeared in 
print. 

The author confesses to a high interest in the form and 
content of sermons. For many years he has been on the 
look-out for sermonic ideas, both in his reading and in his 
human contacts, but as his routine duties are those of the 
teacher rather than the preacher, his opportunities for de¬ 
veloping the homiletical thoughts that have come to him 
have been somewhat limited. He has had in his mind many 
embryo sermons which have never seen the light of day. 
The brief discourses which comprise this volume have for 
the most part never been expanded. The ideas upon which 
they are based are not completely developed. It is hoped 
that this will add to their value by giving them greater 
power of suggesting thoughts to other minds. 




TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 



f 


LARGER MAPS 


I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the bar¬ 
barians; both to the wise and the unwise . 

Romans I, 14. 

“ You need to study larger maps,” said Lord Salisbury to an 
opponent in an argument over certain phases of the policy 
of the British Empire. Paul was a man who never needed 
such advice. Many of the Jewish Christians could not con¬ 
ceive of Christianity as being anything but a Hebrew re¬ 
ligion. They believed that Christ came to redeem Israel and 
Israel only. They contended that a man could not become 
a Christian without essentially becoming a Jew and adher¬ 
ing to all the requirements of the Old Testament ritual. 
Paul, however, was a man of broader vision. In the cosmo¬ 
politan commercial town of Tarsus in which he was born 
and reared he had come into contact with all sorts and con¬ 
ditions of men. Roman soldiers, Jewish rabbis, Greek phi¬ 
losophers, Bedouin chieftains and Phoenician sailors were 
all to be found upon its streets. Naturally an alert-minded 
boy growing up in such an environment would learn to 
think in terms of the larger world. The apostle to the 
Gentiles was no provincial. A man of petty horizons could 
never have carried Christianity to the Western world. 

Paul was an imperial thinker. He realized that he had 
a debt of responsibility to the cultured Greek and to the 
big-muscled barbarian in the fastness of Northern forests. 
He was the first man to grasp the far-reaching truth that 
Christianity is a world religion. This idea explains the mis- 


2 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


sionary journeys which set in motion forces which trans¬ 
formed the world. It is also the basis of one of Christianity’s 
pre-eminent contributions to the thought-life of the world. 
Christianity is a deprovincializing religion. To think in 
terms of limited outlooks and narrow barriers is to fail to 
grasp the essential teachings of Jesus Christ. 

A resident of the village of Concord, Mass., when told 
of the high prices at which lots were being sold in the 
newly rising city of Chicago, remarked that he could not see 
how land could bring that much when it was “ so far 
away.” No one would begrudge any Concordian his meed 
of praise in the names of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson 
and other illustrious figures of the golden age of American 
letters, but the attitude of this man indicated a spirit of 
smug satisfaction which was perfectly willing to ignore the 
rest of the world. The same trait manifests itself in divers 
ways in every generation. It has been an impediment to 
world brotherhood and to human progress. In the nearer 
relations of life it has made for narrowness, pettiness and 
bigotry. 

All of us have heard of the old man who prayed: 

Lord, bless me and my wife, 

My son John and his wife, 

Us four and no more. 

And around the corner from him there lived a couple with 
no children. It is reported that their prayer was: 

Lord, bless us two, 

And that will do. 

A couple of blocks farther down the street lived an old 
bachelor and he prayed: 


LARGER MAPS 


3 


Lord, bless only me, 

That’s as far as I can see. 

These are rhymes rather than poetry, but they epitomize 
volumes of truth. In almost any American city men can be 
found whose interests are circumscribed by their particular 
service club. For them, those who do not belong to it simply 
do not exist. And the men are not the only sinners in this 
regard. There are women whose human interests are con¬ 
fined to the membership of a bridge club. But more tragic 
is the fact that occasionally the same spirit prevails in 
churches. Devotion to one’s church is a noble character¬ 
istic. Yet the limiting of our contacts to its membership is 
a contravention of the basic principles of Christianity. 

Long since have we learned that man is his brother’s 
keeper. The Samaritan in the parable showed his breadth 
of soul by recognizing his responsibility to the wounded 
Jew as he lay by the roadside. The genuineness of one’s 
Christianity can be tested by the inclusiveness of the word 
neighbor in his vocabulary. Not simply those of one group 
but all men are our brethren. 


A SUBTERFUGE OF COWARDICE 


For none might enter into the Ring's gate clothed 
with sac\cloth. 

Esther IV, 2. 

There was nothing attractive about sackcloth. It was 
coarse, uncomfortable, dark and dirty-looking. Neither 
were its suggestions pleasant. It was worn by the very poor 
and also by those in mourning. It eventually came to be 
a symbol of sorrow and regret. Very frequently one who 
desired to show deep grief or penitence for misdeeds would 
don garb made of this unsightly material. In the course 
of the narrative of the Book of Esther we are informed that 
no one wearing sackcloth could enter the king’s palace. 
Apparently the ruler of all Persia protected himself from 
the unpleasant thoughts suggested by garments of poverty 
or grief. 

In avoiding anything which would bring to his mind the 
afflictions of others, the king was guilty of cowardice and 
a lack of social responsibility. The same tendency can 
manifest itself in ways innumerable. Two men were to¬ 
gether in a Pullman. As the train pulled through the slum 
section of the city and before them unrolled a scene of 
crowded streets, hideous homes, worn, bedraggled women 
and pinched-faced children, one of the men pulled down 
the curtain. The other lifted it again. The first said: “I 
don’t like to see it. I can’t do anything about it.” The other 
replied, “ You can at least look at it.” The effete estheticism 
which makes a deliberate effort to ignore the disagreeable 
tends to the perversion of simple honesty. In Louis Unter- 
4 


A SUBTERFUGE OF COWARDICE 


5 

meyer’s “ Prayer ” there are two stanzas which are a peti¬ 
tion for help in keeping alive a sense of human sympathy: 

Open my eyes to visions girt 
With beauty and with wonder lit — 

But let me always see the dirt 
And all that spawn and die in it. 

Open my ears to music; let 
Me thrill with Spring’s first flutes and drums — 

But never let me dare forget 
The bitter ballad of the slums. 

In these terrible years through which we have been pass¬ 
ing, these years of so many shattered hopes, of unemployed 
men and starving families, the contemptible trait of attempt¬ 
ing to minimize the tragedies of our national life has been 
especially in evidence. For years in the presence of the irre¬ 
futable logic of ghastly facts men have had the effrontery to 
deny the presence of the untold suffering which has every¬ 
where existed. Sometimes these words of cowardly and 
dishonest optimism have come from the lips of the type 
of politician whose chief stock in trade has been the oint¬ 
ment of gladness, which he feels it is his bounden duty to 
dispense. Other times such amiable untruths have been 
uttered by those who, untouched by calamity themselves, 
have not wanted to be annoyed by thinking about others 
who might need their help. At a time when probably ten 
millions of men had been separated from their means of 
livelihood, more than once I heard the statement, “ A man 
can get work if he wants it.” There are occasions when ig¬ 
norance is a downright sin. To recognize sackcloth as 
sackcloth is not only an ethical virtue; it is a Christian 
obligation. 


6 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


The song which Robert Browning puts into the mouth 
of Pippa is a dainty little lyric without which English litera¬ 
ture would be poorer, but it contains two lines which have 
been sorely abused by the purblind optimists: 

God’s in his heaven, 

All’s right with the world. 

By no stretch of imagination can it be claimed that “ all’s 
right with the world.” Everywhere there is suffering to be 
eliminated, wrong to be righted. Emerson, in one of his 
characteristic epigrams, tells us, “ There is a crack in every¬ 
thing God has made.” There is no institution or organiza¬ 
tion that is not susceptible to improvement. No individual 
has attained perfection. The first step in any improvement 
is the recognition of defects. If the oriental kings had seen 
the sackcloth on their subjects, they would have been better 
rulers. It would have given them more sympathy and a 
higher sense of responsibility. To recognize the defects of 
our country does not militate against the worth of one’s 
citizenship. The perennial optimist is not likely to do much 
to right wrongs. He will be more prone to deny their 
existence. There is much in life that is sordid, squalid, and 
discouraging. And it devolves upon each one of us to ad¬ 
mit this. Yet this is not the whole duty of man. If the 
sackcloth represents poverty, the question for every indi¬ 
vidual to ask himself is: “What have I done to improve 
conditions for others? Have I helped in my little way to 
advance the cause of social justice? Or have I been a blind 
worshiper of the gods of standpatism ? ” If the sackcloth 
is indicative of sorrow, it should make us remember that 
“ never morning wore to evening but some heart did break,” 
and cause our hearts to beat in sympathy with those whose 
sky is overcast. 


SILVER WINGS 


Though ye have lain among the pots, yet ye shall be 
as the wings of a dove covered with silver and her 
feathers with yellow gold. 

Psalm LXVIII, 13. 

In that collection of noble, soul-fathoming Hebrew poetry 
which we call the Psalms there is no passage more enig¬ 
matic, mesmeric and elusively beautiful than this mysteri¬ 
ous verse. Nobody knows exactly what it means. The 
smoke of exegetical controversy has hovered about it for 
generations. It is indeed, as Charles H. Spurgeon says, 
“ a hard nut to crack.” 

Some commentators have interpreted it in the light of its 
oriental setting in such a way as to make it rich in ethical 
and spiritual content. The flat roofs of the Palestinian 
houses become repositories for all kinds of discarded house¬ 
hold equipment, especially pots and pans. During the heat 
of the day doves take refuge in this debris. Toward eve¬ 
ning they emerge. The light of the setting sun makes some 
of their feathers gleam like silver and others like gold. If 
this background is taken for granted the thought of the 
verse is that though man must live among the pots and pans 
of life he does not have to be spotted by untoward surround¬ 
ings, that his soul can be as free from contamination as the 
wings of a dove covered with silver and her feathers with 
yellow gold. 

There is no doubt whatever that environment is one of the 
most potent factors of life. Practically every language ex- 
7 


8 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


presses this thought in some form of proverb. The Hebrew 
says: “ He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a 
companion of fools shall be destroyed.” In his letter to the 
Christians in Corinth Paul quotes the Greek as saying, 
“ Evil communications corrupt good manners.” The Span¬ 
ish aphorism is, “ Live with the wolves and you will learn to 
howl.” And none of these proverbs is more unforgettable 
than that of the Dutch, “ Lie down with dogs and you will 
get up with fleas.” 

No man, however, is absolutely molded by his environ¬ 
ment. As a college student I heard Bishop Quayle in the 
days when he was yet a pastor give an address on “ The 
Four Factors of Destiny,” heredity, environment, self and 
God. It does not take such a vast amount of hard thinking 
to see that each of the factors is potent in determining the 
trend of a life. Environment is but one of them. Several 
years ago certain rather technical writers had much to say 
about the object of education being to adjust the individual 
to his environment. That there is a big truth at the center 
of this idea no one could deny. Yet it is most certainly not 
the whole truth. Sometimes a man’s big task is to resist the 
tendencies of his environment. In Goethe’s Faust a group 
of young men are discussing plans for spending a holiday. 
One has this plan and another that. The third, however, 
makes no suggestions. His statement is, “I go with the 
crowd.” Not all crowds go in the wrong direction. But 
if a person faces life with such a philosophy he is likely at 
some time or other to find himself in an environment not 
conducive to keeping the plumage of his life free from 
sordid stains. 

There are certain types of birds which can burrow in 
mud and come out with their feathers clean and shining. 


SILVER WINGS 


9 

At the root of the feathers glands secrete a liquid which 
prevents their being soiled. Man can have that within 
which will keep his life from being polluted by the befoul¬ 
ing conditions under which he might be called to live. 
All of us live in two worlds, the world without and the 
world within. We cannot control external conditions, but 
every man is lord of the world within. Everybody to a 
degree makes his own environment. If the inner life is 
clean, if the ideals are unsullied, although we do lie among 
the pots we shall be as the wings of a dove covered with 
silver and her feathers with yellow gold. 


THE RELIGION OF THE LOWLANDS 


When they were come down from the hill. / 

Luke IX, 37. ' 

We who see but through a glass darkly cannot comprehend 
all that took place upon the mountain of transfiguration. 
We do know, however, that for Peter, James and John it 
was a great experience of direct contact with spiritual reality. 
How different were those heights from the prosaic old earth 
with its grossness, its sordidness and its hideousness, its 
never-ending temptations, its inevitable sorrows and its un¬ 
fathomable mysteries. No wonder that Peter wanted to 
stay there. But it was not to be. For him life was not to be 
an endless succession of beatific visions upon the glory-lit 
mountain-top. Down upon the lowlands there were sorrow 
to be assuaged, wounds to be healed, work to be done. 

What Jesus and the disciples found when they came down 
from the hills must have been a tragic contrast with the 
glory that they had just beheld. A man came to the Master 
imploring him to help his son who was having paroxysms 
which caused him to writhe and foam. Jesus’ first task after 
the vision of the mountain-top was to bring health to this 
pain-torn body. This incident is very typical. About the 
time that man feels that he has attained the higher realms 
of vision he finds himself face to face with the everyday 
tasks of a commonplace world. Most of the tasks of life 
have about them nothing of the romantic or glamorful. 
Although it may be hard to say, “ blessed be drudgery,” no¬ 
body escapes it. It is a large part of every existence. We 
10 


THE RELIGION OF THE LOWLANDS ft"'' 

could not avoid it if we would, and to try to do so is to 
shirk obligations. 

In Sidney Lanier’s “ Song of the Chattahoochee ” the poet 
represents the river as enticed to linger among the beauty 
of the verdure-clad hills through which it flowed, but in the 
last stanzas he makes it say: 

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, 

And oh, not the valleys of Hall 
Avail. I am fain for to water the plain. 

Downward the voices of Duty call — 

Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, 

The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 

And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, 

And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham, 

Calls through the valleys of Hall. 

For all of us the voice of duty calls down into the valleys of 
life. If the spiritual vision of the mountain-top does not 
make us more faithful in performing the difficult, prosaic 
and discouraging tasks of daily life it has availed nothing. 

No mystical experience is a substitute for the faithful per¬ 
formance of one’s share in the work of the world. When 
Phillips Brooks was a student in theological seminary he 
was especially impressed with the devoutness of some of 
his fellow-students in prayer-meeting. Along with this, 
however, he could not help noticing that in some instances 
the same men showed little sense of responsibility in regard 
to their class obligations, and he found it difficult to recon¬ 
cile their verbal piety with their general slipshod habits. 

A group of students one summer evening were sitting to¬ 
gether on the porch of a fraternity house when one of them, 


12 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


who was somewhat philosophically inclined, asked the 
group the question, “What do you fellows regard as the 
chief object of life? ” The first answer came from a man 
somewhat inclined to make pious verbiage a substitute for 
thinking, and he immediately reached into his ecclesiastical 
vocabulary and responded, “ To glorify God and enjoy him 
forever.” Another man who had just accepted his first 
position replied, “ I am going to try to make good at my 
job and be the best teacher that I possibly can.” The fine 
old phrase from the Westminster Catechism which the first 
man used is not to be dismissed as inconsequential, even 
though like many similar expressions it has been unctuously 
uttered by those without any understanding of its signifi¬ 
cance. Nevertheless, there is no better way of glorifying 
God than by faithfulness in the sphere of our common 
duties. An American politician of the last century made 
himself the laughing-stock of the public by proudly re¬ 
marking, when commended for pursuing a course of wis¬ 
dom and courage, “ I seen my duty and I done it.” The 
person who can honestly utter such words, even if his 
grammar is considerably worse than shaky, is measuring 
up to a high religious standard. A religion that does not 
improve one’s conduct of life is sounding brass and tinkling 
cymbal. 

“ His feet are always on the ground,” I once heard a man 
say of another. Such a statement is a genuine compliment 
to anyone. He of whom it can be said is practical rather 
than theoretical. He meets life’s responsibilities in the right 
way. Whatsoever his hand findeth to do he does honestly 
and efficiently. He does not shirk the hard tasks or the 
disagreeable duties of life. He realizes that the only road to 
the mount of vision is the path of duty. 


THE RELIGION OF THE LOWLANDS 


13 


Not once or twice in our fair island-story, 
The path of duty was the way to glory: 

He that ever following her commands, 

On with toil of heart and knees and hands, 
Thro’ the long gorge to the far light has won 
His way upward, and prevail’d, 

Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled 
Are close upon the shining table-lands 
To which our God Himself is moon and sun. 


FRUITFUL FAILURES 


Thou didst well in that it was in thine heart. 

II Chronicles VI, 8. 

There are few biographies in any literature which are more 
full of adventure and glamour than that of David, king of 
Israel. To say that it reads like a novel would be too com¬ 
plimentary to most fiction. It is probably first of the nu¬ 
merous stories of “ poor boys who became famous.” It is 
a record of personal and national achievement. David was 
a military leader and a nation-builder. He was one of his 
country’s greatest poets. No one making a list of the mighty 
figures in Hebrew history would dream of omitting his 
name. Yet David’s life was not one of undiluted successes. 
Like every other career it was checkered with failures. 

It had been his ambition to build a temple which would 
be the center of the religious life of his people. This hope 
he was not allowed to bring to fruition, but the Lord told 
him that even if it had not been his lot to build the house 
he did well in having such a thought in his heart. It is easy 
to sneer at ideals, to contrast their evanescence with the 
tangibility of that which is really accomplished. Again and 
again have good intentions been dismissed with contemptu¬ 
ous epigrams. Yet the unattained ideal has not been with¬ 
out its valiant defenders. 

Robert Browning, poet of radiant optimism and trium¬ 
phant faith, than whom few have seen deeper into the 
recesses of the human soul, has time after time given expres¬ 
sion to his deeply rooted belief in the value of the unrealized 
14 


FRUITFUL FAILURES 


*5 

ideal. In “ Saul ” he puts into the mouth of David the 
words: “’Tis not what man Does which exalts him but 
what man Would do,” and he has Rabbi Ben Ezra say: 

But all the world’s coarse thumb 
And finger failed to plumb, 

So passed in making up the main account; 

All instincts immature, 

All purposes unsure, 

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s 
amount: 

Thoughts hardly to be packed 
Into a narrow act, 

Fancies that broke through language and escaped; 

All I could never be, 

All men ignored in me, 

This was I worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 

A man is to be judged not by what he has done but by what 
he has wanted to do, and tried to do. The part that un¬ 
attained hopes play in human life is not to be minimized. 

Our ideals are the measure of the scope of our lives. If 
our reach does not exceed our grasp, we have set too low 
a standard. Anybody who, as he looks back over the years 
of his life, can truthfully say, “ I have realized all of my 
ambitions, I have accomplished every task which I set out 
to do,” is in such a statement making a confession of low 
ideals. Perfect satisfaction with what one has accomplished 
is indicative of a lack of the faculty of self-criticism, which 
in itself is evidence of inadequate standards. In my own 
profession I have noticed that the teacher who invariably 
reports perfect success with his work is not usually the 


i6 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


one of outstanding efficiency. It is the preacher who is 
satisfied with slovenly mediocrity who always tells his 
brethren that he “ had a good time.” The highest standards 
are never entirely attained. Goals worth attaining always 
lie beyond. 

The higher the ideal we set for ourselves, the higher the 
one we reach. Phillips Brooks said, “ If you aim at the stars 
you hit the treetops.” A florist visualizes a perfect rose and 
tries to produce it. He never succeeds but he does raise 
thousands of transcendently beautiful roses in his attempt 
to bring into existence his ideal. Perhaps Shakespeare never 
wrote a drama which met all of the standards of an ideal 
play, but Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, and other mas¬ 
terpieces of the creative imagination are the products of 
his search for literary perfection. All progress is the result 
of Man’s striving for the unattainable. 

Ideals keep one’s soul alive. When we cease to cherish 
them the fires upon the altars of our lives smolder and go 
out. It is only the idealist who sees the heavenly vision; 
without ideals of faith and of unselfish love religious ca¬ 
pacity can never grow. A lack of idealism is responsible 
for a diminishing sense of obligation. The relinquishing of 
the ideal produces a religious life that is creeping, torpid, 
feeble and insipid. The realist who is satisfied to work from 
day to day doing what he can without any fixed ideals, 
who boasts that he is interested only in the practical and 
the attainable, has lost the sky from his landscape. He does 
not see the stars above the freight train. His soul is living 
in a windowless room where it becomes arid and shriveled. 

The cherishing of the ideals makes it easier for some one 
later on to do what we should have liked to have done. 
David could not build the temple, but his son did. The 


FRUITFUL FAILURES 


creations of a Raphael and a Michelangelo are the quin¬ 
tessence of the painstaking efforts of forgotten artists who 
preceded them. Luther turned the world upside down at 
a time when such a feat needed to be accomplished, but 
countless unknown champions of freedom and truth pre¬ 
pared the way for his titanic achievements. St Gaudens* 
statue of Sherman is the result of the accumulated artistic 
ideals of the ages. The unattained of one generation be¬ 
comes the attained of the next. He who holds fast to his 
unfulfilled ideals benefits the life of humanity. 


THE GOSPEL OF LIBERTY 


Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ 
hath made us free, and be not entangled again with 
the yo\e of bondage. 

Galatians V, i. 

Paul was one of the world’s great champions of freedom. 
He stood for the individual against the oppression of the 
group, for progress against traditionalism, for liberty against 
formalism. No reader of the Old Testament needs to be 
told that the ancient Hebrew religion was legalistic. It laid 
an undue stress upon form. There were minute laws regu¬ 
lating practically every detail of life. In an earlier day 
these codes had been the necessary guides of a primitive 
people. In Paul’s time they were a husk in which the kernel 
had withered. Sometimes the less vital a religion the more 
it emphasizes meaningless externals. It was against a back¬ 
ground such as this that Paul had revolted. 

He believed in a first-hand faith, in the possibility of the 
individual’s direct contact with Jesus Christ. Not all of 
the early Christians were able to go as far in this direction 
as did Paul. Some of his associates were still more or less 
enmeshed in the old-time legalism. To those who were 
but half emerged from Judaism, Paul was looked upon as 
an unsafe guide and a dangerous innovator. More than 
once in words pulsating with conviction he was compelled 
to defend his apostleship. The gospel he had preached to 
the Galatians had been impugned on such grounds. And 
a large part of his letter to them is a defense of the truth as 
18 


THE GOSPEL OF LIBERTY 


19 

he presented it. The Jewish Christians who were still in 
the bonds of the antique formalism of bygone generations 
had been teaching the pre-eminence of the old-time Hebraic 
laws. These men and their doctrines Paul handled with¬ 
out gloves. He warned the Galatians to stand fast in the 
liberty wherewith Christ had made them free and to avoid 
becoming entangled in the impeding bondage of a dead 
traditionalism. Professor Godet has paid his Epistle to the 
Galatians the tribute of characterizing it as the “ proclama¬ 
tion of the new era of spiritual liberty.” 

If an oriental is asked as to the basis of his ecclesiastical 
authority he exhibits a long roll and begins to read. First 
comes his own name, then that of the sheikh who had or¬ 
dained him. Next comes that of the ordainer of his ordainer. 
This continues until he announces the impressive words: 
“ who received it from Hosein, who received it from Ali, 
who received it from Mohammed.” Paul made no such 
claims. A pedigree of such a type would have made no im¬ 
pression upon him. Again and again he asserted that his 
apostolate was the result of an immediate summons. He 
begins the letter to the Christians of Galatia with the words: 
“ Paul an apostle (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus 
Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead).” 
This thought of the directness of his ordination he stressed 
not once but many times. Any careful reader of his letters 
can very readily see that Paul had hours of discouragement 
in regard to his personal fitness for the great tasks which 
devolved upon him. He never had any doubts, however, 
in regard to the genuineness of his call. “ Our sufficiency 
is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the 
new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the 
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” 


20 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


The requirements of a religion of the spirit are always 
infinitely greater than those of the letter. In Masefield’s 
“ The Everlasting Mercy ” Saul Kane says to the easygoing 
old parson 

You mumble through a formal code 

To get which martyrs burned and glowed. 

Although no one can deny that ritualism has been for many 
a path leading to the higher altitudes of spirituality, it can 
be made an easy substitute for right living. No code of 
ethics has been written which applies to all of the situations 
of life. And a life entirely regulated by a digest of rules 
invariably lacks spontaneity, beauty and dynamic. Jesus 
did not attempt to lay down minute laws in regard to every 
phase of human existence. His spiritual insight enabled 
him to see that such a system would not work. He enun¬ 
ciated broad general principles of living which left the in¬ 
dividual an opportunity for moral initiative. His emphasis 
was not on the deadening letter but upon the life-giving 
spirit. 

This Paul sensed. While some were quibbling over dead 
issues and extinct forms, he was enunciating the far-reach¬ 
ing, world-shaking, soul-building law of Christian liberty. 
Through the generations man has shown a proneness to 
sink into the dry ruts of empty formality, and other great 
spiritual leaders have sounded the tocsin of the gospel of 
liberty. Wycliffe, Luther, Knox, Wesley, and a host of 
nameless heralds of freedom have called men to quench their 
soul’s thirst not at the brackish cisterns of ecclesiasticism 
but at the fountains of living water. And to each individual 
the call of Christ is a call to the liberty wherewith he hath 
made us free. 


REUBEN, THE UNSTABLE 


'Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the 
beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, 
and the excellency of power: unstable as water, thou 
shalt not excel . 

Genesis XLIX, 3, 4. 

We do not ordinarily think of Reuben as an individual but 
merely as one of the sons of Jacob. If we go a step farther 
we remember that he was the oldest son, and that in a well- 
intentioned blundering way he attempted to save Joseph 
from the hands of his more malignant brothers when their 
jealousy had inflamed them to such a rage that they were 
ready to murder their father’s favorite. In his closing words 
Jacob does not deal with generalities but reminds Reuben 
of how long years before he had made his father’s concubine, 
Bilhah, his paramour. Taking it all in all, Jacob’s dying 
characterization of his oldest son gives a clearer insight into 
Reuben’s life than anything which we have hitherto learned 
about him. 

He had been a grievous disappointment to his father. In 
those days the eldest son, on account of his priority of birth, 
possessed a prestige which was hard to take from him. Ja¬ 
cob’s words tell of the pride and hope which came to him 
with the advent of this boy. Parents, as they look into the 
face of their little child, naturally dream dreams and cherish 
hopes. The miserable wretch who receives his deserved sen¬ 
tence before the bar of justice and shambles away to prison 
handcuffed to an officer, in all probability was once the pride 
of loving parents. 

21 


22 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


When I was a little boy I remember going to town with 
my father and how all of the men were jovially congratulat¬ 
ing one of their companions because of his recently arrived 
son. One remark that the father made has stood out in my 
mind through the years. He said something like this: “ I 
ain’t never amounted to much myself but I want that boy 
to have a chance. I am goin’ to see that he gets some good 
schoolin’. We’re goin’ to name him after his dad.” Not 
long after this our family moved away from that locality, 
and I never again saw the proud young father. Once in 
a while, however, I would see in a local paper the names of 
the members of that family. Something over thirty years 
later I was, with my usual care, reading the old home paper 
and I noted an item telling of how John Doe, Jr., as we shall 
call him, had been arrested for an unspeakable offense. Not 
long after I read of the death of his father. I have no way 
of knowing whether he had done his part as a father or not, 
but whatever his limitations had been his heart must have 
bled with disappointment at the contrast between his glow¬ 
ing ambitions for his son and the pitiable outcome. 

In his dying words concerning Reuben Jacob succinctly 
gives the reason for his son’s futility. “ Unstable as water,” 
he calls him. Reuben’s saving the life of Joseph by persuad¬ 
ing his brethren to cast him into a pit from which he in¬ 
tended to rescue him later, and his horror upon finding 
that they had sold him as a slave, show that he was a man 
of good impulses. It also demonstrates that he was not 
the kind of individual who would take strong positions. A 
man of real courage could have prevented their killing 
Joseph without resorting to such a subterfuge. That, how¬ 
ever, is never the method used by one “ unstable as water.” 

The unstable man lacks the virtue of dependability. His 


REUBEN, THE UNSTABLE 


23 

life is ruled not by principle but by impulse. In protecting 
his brother, Reuben’s impulse was good. When he “ went 
up to his father’s bed and defiled his couch,” it was bad. 
There are two natures that struggle within man. He is 
created in the image of God and made a little lower than 
the angels, and he is a brother to the beast that takes its 
license in the fields of time. This means the existence of a 
battle between the higher and the lower nature. Good im¬ 
pulses and bad ones make themselves felt in the same tene¬ 
ment of clay. If the evil ones are yielded to, they will finally 
obliterate the good ones. A life lived on the plane of im¬ 
pulse never excels. Not “ What do I want to do ? ” but 
“ What ought I to do ? ” is the question asked by the man 
whose life is regulated by principle. 

When Sam Staples, the village constable of Concord, in 
the performance of his official duty was compelled to arrest 
Amos Bronson Alcott because he refused to pay his taxes, 
he remarked: “ I vum, I believe it was nothing but prin¬ 
ciple.” Even if a man’s life is regulated by his convictions 
it will not be free from mistakes, but it will have direction. 
A life whose course is determined by impulse is like a rud¬ 
derless ship. Right conduct is based not upon random emo¬ 
tions, but upon principle. “ You always know where you 
will find him,” a man once said of another whose integrity 
he was praising. This was another way of saying that the 
man of whom he was speaking possessed moral stability. 
Shrewd old Jacob, long before he came to the end of his 
journey, had perceived that his oldest son would amount 
to nothing because he was “ unstable as water.” 


THE MASTERY OF EXTERNALS 


I \now both how to be abased and I \now how to 
abound . 

Philippians IV, 12. 

Paul had experience with both prosperity and adversity. 
These were words written in a Roman dungeon. During 
the years that had passed since Paul had seen the blinding 
light and heard the divine voice his life had been anything 
but one of ease. In two verses he summarizes those years 
of his life: “ In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in 
perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils 
by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilder¬ 
ness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in 
weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger 
and thirst, in fastings often, in hunger and nakedness.” A 
man who had passed through all of these experiences had 
little left to learn in the school of adversity. 

Paul also says that he knows not only how to be poor but 
to be rich, that he has learned the secret of right living in 
the midst of riches. Although our knowledge of Paul’s 
early life is rather fragmentary, there is little doubt but that 
he had experienced life under prosperous conditions. His 
boyhood home was in Tarsus of Cilicia, and the fact that 
his father, a Jew, had become a Roman citizen indicates 
some standing in the community. As Paul’s writings evi¬ 
dence a familiarity with Greek culture, the social position 
of the family must have been good. Moreover, his father 
had sufficient worldly goods to send him to Jerusalem to 


THE MASTERY OF EXTERNALS 


25 

study Jewish law under Gamaliel. Paul was not given to 
idle boasting. Therefore, even if we had no evidence what¬ 
ever that he knew a life of prosperity, we should be safe in 
taking for granted that he would not have said, “ I know 
how to abound,” if he had never known anything but 
poverty. Augur, the son of Jakeh, prayed: 

Give me neither poverty nor riches; 

Feed me with the food that is needful for me: 

Lest I be full and deny thee, and say, who is the Lord ? 

Or lest I be poor and steal 

And use profanely the name of the Lord. 

This golden mean is the ideal state. A small proportion of 
the human race, however, become rich, and a large percent¬ 
age of it walks the path of poverty. Both riches and poverty 
are a danger to the higher life. 

Another wise man uttered the words, “ The prosperity of 
fools shall destroy.” When Jesus said, “ it is easier for a 
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
to enter the kingdom of heaven,” he was expressing in 
oriental imagery the thought that it is hard for a man of 
wealth to live upon the higher plains of spirituality. Lux¬ 
ury follows in the wake of riches. A luxurious life causes 
the fiber of the soul to deteriorate. Wealth is an enemy 
to the old-time simplicities of life. The oft-quoted aphor¬ 
ism, “ Three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves,” 
is not a rule of universal applicability. The entire wisdom 
of the universe cannot be compressed into a succinct sen¬ 
tence. But any person who has lived a half-century and 
has kept his eyes open has seen the debilitating influence 
of too great wealth vitiate the strength and the usefulness 
of a family. Making what is called “ society ” the object 


2 6 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


of life crowds out the higher interests, and riches open the 
doors to this type of social preferment. Comparatively sel¬ 
dom it is that the higher interests of life exist among the 
excessively rich. Not everybody knows how to abound. 

The blessings of poverty are easier to eulogize than to 
endure. To preserve the nobler traits of character in the 
midst of degrading poverty is a formidable task. Poverty 
closes the doors of cultural opportunity. It often places 
one in associations where the common and base predom¬ 
inate. It may mean enervating and hopeless toil, or what 
is possibly even worse, that sense of uselessness and dis¬ 
couragement which comes to him for whom there is no 
chance to earn a simple subsistence. Many a person is going 
through life suffering physical handicaps which could have 
easily been eradicated if there had been sufficient means. 
The disappointment and the never-ending struggle of a 
life of hopeless poverty in many instances do not bring out 
the qualities which make one irenic and lovable. To learn 
how to be abased makes almost superhuman demands upon 
the individual. 

Different as are the conditions of excessive wealth and 
bitter poverty, the mastery of both is a matter of learning 
one lesson, that of the dominance of the inner life. If we 
give pre-eminence to the things of the spirit, wealth will not 
debilitate or poverty degrade us. Externals cannot ruin 
the soul of him who lives the life of the spirit. The God 
whose strength is around our weakness will help us to over¬ 
come both the temptations of adversity and those of pros¬ 
perity. Paul’s life is evidence that it is possible to know 
how to be abased and how to abound. 


AT EASE IN ZION 


Woe to them that are at ease in Zion. 

Amos VI, i. 

The Book of Amos is one of the noblest pieces of creative 
writing in the literature of the world. Our knowledge of 
the man who produced it can be summarized in a few 
sentences. Out upon the lonely hillsides of Tekoa he 
watched over his flocks of little black-faced sheep and 
pruned his sycamore trees. He was, nevertheless, no un¬ 
lettered man. In all probability he had been educated in 
the capital twelve miles away. In his secluded life away 
from the turmoil of the omnipresent crowds he had time 
to think. As we read the nine scant chapters which are 
the sole monument of his genius, we come into contact with 
many men in one. He was a sociologist, a philosopher, a 
world historian, a theologian, an orator and a poet. He had 
seen enough of the world beyond his own mountains to 
be impressed with the unjust inequalities of fortune. He 
knew that the rich oppressed the poor, that wanton luxury 
and grinding poverty existed side by side, that unspeakable 
vice prevailed in the precincts of the temple itself. 

When he excoriated those at ease in Zion he was thinking 
of the men and women who in an hour of crisis were living 
lives of luxurious frivolity. This man of the hills was not 
a user of honeyed phrases. He called the society women of 
his day “ kine of Bashan,” comparing them in his trenchant 
phrase to the fat cows which tramped over the weaker ones 
in the rich valleys east of Jordan. He describes with words 
27 


28 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


that cut like sharp knives the luxurious lives of those who 
lay upon beds of ivory, ate the lambs of the flock and the 
calves from the stall, and drank wine in bowls, and anointed 
themselves with chief ointments. 

Like several of the other Hebrew prophets, Amos was a 
protester against the trivial, frivolous lives of those who 
amused themselves in the presence of suffering. Amos had 
two quarrels with the rich of his day. One was with the 
way that they had obtained their wealth, and the other was 
the use which they made of it. A man as tremendously 
in earnest as Amos was naturally had little sympathy with 
those who made amusement the great object in life. Any 
life in any age which is spent in the pursuit of pleasure is 
trivial, futile, and essentially sinful. Neither is this the 
road to real happiness. Dr. George H. Palmer summarized 
whole volumes of ethical teaching in one sentence when he 
said, “ Pleasure to be got must be forgot.” If a person has 
to spend too large a proportion of his time and energy in 
seeking happiness, there is a serious lack in his life. 

Happiness is the natural accompaniment of a well- 
balanced life. It comes from work as well as from play. In 
fact, the larger part of the joy of living must come from the 
pleasure that we find in our work. Dr. Cabot in his singu¬ 
larly suggestive and constructive book, What Men Live By, 
along with love and worship mentions both work and play 
as essential factors of the happy, effective life. In mastering 
the art of living some find it hard to distinguish between 
play that is beneficial and that which is harmful. Dr. 
Charles A. Ellwood, in his The Reconstruction of Religion, 
has some wise words in regard to this subject. According 
to his point of view, with which it would be hard to disagree, 
the characteristics of play which is beneficial are four. It 


AT EASE IN ZION 


2 9 

must be recreative, unselfish, recreational and spiritual. It 
is interesting to study modern amusements and note which 
ones meet this standard. Many do. Others do not have a 
single one of these qualities. 

A life may be trivial without being flagrantly wicked, but 
in a world of suffering on every side, in a world where so 
many good causes need assistance, it is hard to find excuses 
for even good-intentioned carelessness. The old-time theo¬ 
logians used to speak frequently of sins of omission and 
commission. Very frequently the waster of time is open 
to censure not so much for what he does as for what he does 
not do. Too easy a life does not bring out the more sterling 
qualities in a character. A frivolous existence causes a fatty 
degeneration of the soul. 

The Puritans have been accused of being inordinately 
serious. Probably they were, but life is not an unending 
bridge party or a perennial picnic. Puritanism has produced 
some of the noblest characters that have ever walked the 
shores of time. A rebaptism of their high seriousness and 
unswerving devotion to spiritual entities would be for the 
betterment of the modern ease-loving world. 


A BORROWED RELIGION 


Sayest thou this of thyself or didst others tell it thee? 

John XVIII, 34. 

One of the most discouraging aspects of the intellectual 
life of man is that so many of the human family are willing 
to substitute hearsay for first-hand investigation or original 
thinking. Very often in the heat of a political campaign a 
wild statement is made by some irresponsible individual 
and soon, prefaced by “ they say,” the falsehood is eagerly 
passed from lip to lip throughout the whole country. Some¬ 
body in an unkind and clever sentence pillories a public 
man, and the utterly unfair aphorism is passed along by 
another who desires that he should be given the credit for 
the flashing epigram whose superficial smartness appeals to 
his shallow judgment. Vile slanders are retailed by those 
who know nothing whatever about the person whom they 
are discussing. And the number of people who claim to 
have, at least second-hand, information about such matters 
is appallingly large. 

Some years ago a candidate for governor in one of the 
largest of American states was speaking in a college town 
and many students were in his audience. During the course 
of his remarks he complimented the local college on defeat¬ 
ing its chief rival in a football game the Saturday before. 
It happened, however, that the team of this institution in¬ 
stead of winning a victory had been beaten by what they 
regarded as an almost disgraceful score. The collegiate part 
of the audience did not seem to be receiving his encomiums 
30 


A BORROWED RELIGION 


31 

with any marked degree of enthusiasm and the speaker 
sensed that something was wrong. Someone on the plat¬ 
form interrupted with the correct information. He stopped 
in embarrassment but tried to save the day by ejaculating: 
“Well, who told me that?” The sentence was reported 
to his opponent who again and again during the campaign 
after he had riddled his arguments would say, “ Who told 
him that? ” There are those who have developed second- 
handedness to s.uch a degree that one might say in regard 
to any idea which they express, “ Who told him that ? ” 

A man’s religion if it exists at all is first-hand. We cannot 
climb the heights of spirituality by means of someone 
else’s faith. Every genuine creed is beaten out on the anvil of 
life by ourselves. No man can go to heaven on his mother’s 
religion. On a certain occasion Father Taylor heard a 
young minister preach a sermon which he had “ borrowed.” 
In the closing prayer the old man spoke of the discourse 
in terms of highest praise and then amazed the congregation 
and mortified the preacher by quoting: “ But alas, Master! 
for it was borrowed.” The preacher of the day never ceased 
to hear of “ the borrowed axe ” and eventually sought a 
field of labor far from Boston. A borrowed religion lacks 
reality. In certain religious services which I attended in 
my early boyhood I could not help noting that some people 
in speaking of their religious problem meant what they 
said. They spoke of that which life had taught them. 
Much was said in those days of “ religious experience,” a 
phrase which when sincerely used has a deep and noble 
meaning. A man or woman who has a real “ experience ” 
has something which is genuine. But I can also remember 
those who in taking part in such services used a collection 
of glib phrases which seemed to float around in the atmos- 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


3 2 

phere and belong to nobody in particular. The using of 
these borrowed terms naturally tended to develop an artifi¬ 
ciality and an insincerity. 

Alfred Tennyson, speaking of his friend Arthur Hallam, 
said : 

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, 

At last he beat his music out. 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 

Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

The reason that there is more faith in honest doubt than in 
a completely swallowed, inherited creed is that the former 
is an indication of first-hand thinking. This does not mean 
that a man cannot accept the faith in which he was nurtured. 
But a creed is not our own until we make it our own. No 
man’s faith is exactly like that of anyone else. A borrowed 
code of beliefs is not vital. And a religion that is not vital 
is not real. There can be no such thing as a borrowed 
religion. Our faith is not a product of what we have heard 
or read but of what we have really experienced as we have 
faced the realities which each man must face for himself. 


HOPE FOR THE CASTAWAY 


Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners . 

I Timothy I, 15. ) C . 

Travelers in the Orient are often impressed with the little 
regard for human life evidenced in non-Christian lands. A 
heavily laden boat was going down the Yangtse River when 
a man fell off. He made a desperate effort to swim to the 
boat but to no avail. Those on board watched him pur¬ 
suing it until his strength failed and he sank beneath the 
yellow waters. The captain and crew did not appear to 
have the slightest intimation that it would be worth while 
to stop the boat in order to save the life of a coolie. 

One of the essential hallmarks of Christianity is its re¬ 
gard for the weak. Animals in a savage state either desert 
or kill their sick or injured. Savages frequently show the 
same tendency. The law of the survival of the fittest 
through the centuries was in many an ancient culture al¬ 
lowed without interference ruthlessly to eliminate defec¬ 
tives. The historians and sages of the ancient Hebrews had 
comparatively little to say about helping those who were 
handicapped. Frequently they pointed out the inevitable 
consequences of evildoing, but their dominant message was 
not one of hope to the sinner. Pharisaism, which exhibits 
the worst aspects of Hebraic ritualism, excludes the sinner. 
The Pharisee, ancient or modern, gloats over the fall of the 
wrongdoer. It does not point him to any door of hope. 

The Christian faith is characterized by a desire to seek and 
save that which is lost. The parables of the prodigal son, 
33 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


34 

of the coin, and of the lost sheep all bring out this basic 
truth with translucent clarity. They teach that one misstep 
need not irretrievably ruin life, that there is hope for the 
castaway. The old hymn expressed a far-reaching truth in 
the homely words: 

While the lamp of life holds out to burn 

The vilest sinner may return. 

The Salvation Army slogan, “ A man may be down but he 
is never out,” is a modern phrasing of this Christian teach¬ 
ing. 

Perfection is a quality not easily attained by human be¬ 
ings. Man is a natural blunderer. When we would do 
good, evil is present with us. The theology of Paul was 
vitalized by a clear insight into the human heart. Conse¬ 
quently, everything that he wrote indicates his consciousness 
of man’s tendency to wander from the straight and narrow 
path of rectitude. He did not except himself but feared 
that even though he had preached to others he himself 
might become a castaway. The eloquent and brilliant 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of laying aside 
“ the sin which doth so easily beset us.” Any honest man 
when he looks into his own heart and life can find there 
some besetting sin against which he must battle. Each one 
has his characteristic weakness. Our personalities express 
themselves in our faults as well as in our virtues. 

Dr. Alexander Whyte was visiting one of the officials of 
his church on a matter of ecclesiastical business. After it 
was transacted the stiff-necked, taciturn old lawyer turned 
to his minister and said: “ Doctor, have you any word that 
would help to comfort a poor old sinner ? ” Dr. Whyte was 
not expecting such a question but there floated into his 


HOPE FOR THE CASTAWAY 


35 

mind the words of Micah, “He delighteth in mercy.” 
Fallible humanity needs a religion that has in it words of 
comfort for the sinner. 

“ Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” This 
is inclusive. Just as we are we can come to him. Jesus is 
not the Savior of moral and spiritual supermen but of the 
common run of the human race. The harder one’s fight 
against sin, the greater his need of the saving power of the 
Son of God. And the harder a man’s moral struggle, the 
more is the Christian religion adapted to his specific need. 
It has helped untold thousands shake off the law of sin and 
death. If we are obsessed with the feeling that we walk 
in darkness and have no light, that we are caught in life’s 
undertow, then it is that we can renew our strength by 
availing ourselves of the promises made to just such as us. 


THE TRAGEDY OF DISUSE 


Ta\e therefore the talent from him . 

Matthew XXV, 28. 

Although one man had five talents, another two, and a 
third one, the parable of the talents is not a tragedy of in¬ 
equality but of disuse. If the five-talent man had hidden 
his treasure in the earth he would have been excoriated in¬ 
stead of commended. If the one-talent man had utilized 
what had been left in his keeping, he would have had ad¬ 
dressed to him the words, “ Well done, good and faithful 
servant.” Five talents put to use became ten and two talents 
grew to four, but the edict in regard to the man who buried 
that which had been entrusted to him was, “ take from him 
the talent.” 

Disuse causes atrophy. Dr. Thomas Beecher, a distin¬ 
guished preacher of Elmira, New York, and a member of 
the famous family of Lyman Beecher, in his old age be¬ 
came obsessed with the fear that he was losing his sight. 
Consequently he decided that he would save the vision of 
one eye by closing it when he read. He practiced this 
method for a long period of time and eventually became 
blind in one eye. The eye of which he lost the sight, how¬ 
ever, was not the one which he used but the one which he 
closed. In A Son of the Middle Border Hamlin Garland 
tells how as a boy he lay entranced before the fireplace in 
the old home in Wisconsin as his handsome young uncle, 
David McClintock, spoke to him through the strings of 
the violin. In one of the closing chapters of the book we 
36 


THE TRAGEDY OF DISUSE 


37 

have a picture of the same man making a bungling attempt 
to play his beloved instrument and then brokenheartedly 
laying it away to take it down no more. His nephew be¬ 
lieved that McClintock had in him the making of a great 
musician but when he tried to play his violin after not hav¬ 
ing touched it for a long time the result was pitiable. 
“ That which is not expressed dies.” Talents unused dis¬ 
appear. 

We can all think of tragedies of wasted lives which it has 
been our lot to witness or perhaps even to experience. In 
speaking of the days when he had sunk to the dregs of life 
Francis Thompson raises the curtain and reveals to us his 
tragedy in these poignant words: 

I stand amid the dust of the molded years — 

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. 

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, 

Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. 

Yea, faileth now even dream 
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; 

And now my heart is as a broken fount, 

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever 
From the dank thoughts that shiver 
Upon the sighful branches of my mind. 

Such is; what is to be? 

There are ten-talent men who accomplish little or noth¬ 
ing. Any student of history knows full well that the largest 
part of the useful work of the world has been done by the 
two-talent man. Joshua Speed, the most intimate friend 
that Abraham Lincoln ever had, once characterized him as 
“ a common man to the nth power.” Once when Theodore 
Roosevelt was lauded to the skies as a superman he protested 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


38 

strongly and said that he had come into the world with no 
unusual endowment and then recounted his physical and in¬ 
tellectual limitations. His fruitful and varied career is only 
one of numerous examples of a man knowing how to make 
the most of ordinary powers. 

Horace Bushnell had a great sermon entitled “ The Ca¬ 
pacity for Religion Extirpated by Disuse.” Man may be 
“ incurably religious ” but unless he gives expression to his 
spirituality he becomes despiritualized. One of the seven 
deadly sins of medieval theology is sloth. The word, how¬ 
ever, has a deeper meaning than lies upon the surface. The 
Latin word is accidia and it has been defined as “ the break¬ 
down of interest in the things which are worthy of a man’s 
endeavor.” How many noble powers are being dissipated 
by this sin! The capacity for religion is being extirpated 
by disuse in millions of lives in modern America. Noble 
endowments are being frittered away in inconsequentiali- 
ties. Trivialities are being allowed to crowd out the eternal 
verities. Therein lies food for serious thought. Only once 
do we pass along this road of life. When it comes to its 
close can we say with Paul, “ I have fought a good fight, I 
have kept the course, I have finished the faith,” or will we 
have to stand face to face with the ghost of a wasted life? 


SHIMEI, THE SCURRILOUS 


Let him alone and let him curse. 

II Samuel XVI, n. 

Shimei appeared on the scene in one of the most tragic hours 
of the life of David. Absalom, his handsome, tempestuous 
son, had tried to seize the throne, and the king in his old 
age had been compelled to flee for his life. When he was 
passing through Bahurim, Shimei, “ a man of the family of 
Saul,” cursed David and threw stones at him and his 
retinue. He shouted: “ Come out, come out, thou bloody 
man, thou man of Belial. The Lord hath delivered the 
kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son.” Just what 
made Shimei so venomous is matter for inference rather 
than of knowledge. The fact that he was a relative of Saul 
would not add anything to his love of David. His bitter¬ 
ness may have represented the attitude of the tribe of Ben¬ 
jamin toward the king from Judah. It looks, however, as 
if there was more to Shimei’s hatred than sheer partisanship. 
He may have been one of those men who fairly seethe with 
hatred of anybody in an exalted position. In all probability 
he had kept his animosity under control for years. Now 
when dark days had fallen upon David and it seemed as 
though he had lost his power, Shimei gave vent to his long 
concealed venom. Whatever the real reason for his rancor, 
he appears to a bad advantage. He is an example of the 
coward who hits a man when he is down. There is nothing 
of the hero in Shimei’s attack on David. He threw stones 
like a naughty little boy and cursed with all of the abusive¬ 
ness of a Billingsgate fishwife. 

39 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


40 

The companions of the king were naturally aroused. One 
of them, Abishai the son of Zeruiah, said to David: “ Why 
should this dead dog curse my lord, the king? Let me go 
over, I pray thee, and take off his head.” David, however, 
replied: “Let him alone, and let him curse; for the Lord 
hath bidden him.” He also said that when his own son was 
trying to kill him [it was to be expected that a Benjamite 
would display his malice. 

David’s theology here is not unexceptionable. He seemed 
to take the attitude that the man who was cursing him was 
an instrument used by the Lord for his punishment. Long 
since have men learned that not everything that happens in 
the world emanates from God. Man abuses his gift of free¬ 
dom by sinning in this way and that. There was nothing 
divine in Shimei’s cursing. It was the spite and venom 
oozing from a malice-infested soul. Whatever exceptions 
we might take to David’s theology, no one could criticize his 
wisdom in ignoring the man. To notice every snarling ges¬ 
ture was beneath the dignity of a king. 

In this incident David teaches a lesson in regard to the 
practical management of a disagreeable situation which 
most men and women confront sooner or later. Few of us 
escape the onslaughts of Shimeis. Sometimes like the Ben¬ 
jamite they may assail us in the light of day. Or more likely 
they attack us in more subtle ways. The tongue of scur¬ 
rility has not yet ceased to wag. The man who pauses to 
answer every slander which attacks him, to quarrel with 
the Shimei who hurls at him the stones of abuse, makes a 
major mistake. Here the words of the Hebrew wise man 
have an especial applicability. “ Answer not a fool accord¬ 
ing to his folly lest thou be like him.” In Reynard the Fox 
John Masefield, in a delightful and unforgettable sentence, 


SHIMEI, THE SCURRILOUS 


4 1 

tells of a woman who used the right method in dealing 
with petty critics and criticism: “ She let the little sparrows 
twitter.” On the day when he was insulted David followed 
essentially the same rule. 

In giving his reasons he went further. He said: “ Perhaps 
the Lord will take pity on my affliction and some day bring 
good to me on account of this cursing.” Again David’s 
theology is rather naive, but it has at its center a kernel of 
truth. Sometimes the sneers and innuendoes of our enemies 
can be fruitful of good in our lives. Abuse does not do one 
as much harm as flattery. The Shimei who points out our 
faults may be a factor in our development of the grace of 
humility. Patience in the presence of scurrility is a quality 
worth attaining. 

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken 
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 

you have won a moral victory. To stop to “ get even ” im¬ 
pedes a man’s usefulness and scars his soul. David gained 
a moral victory by saying, “Let him alone and let him 
curse.” Later Shimei sought pardon and David granted it. 

If we could stop here, the story of David and Shimei would 
be one with a happy ending. Instead it is an anticlimax. 
David’s deathbed scene is not especially edifying. He closed 
his life not with benedictions but with curses. Some of 
those who had mistreated him he turned over to Solomon 
for punishment. Among this group was Shimei of whom 
the dying king uttered these words, “ His hoar head bring 
thou down to the grave with blood.” This shows that 
David had not gained a complete victory over himself. He 
allowed the bitter memory to fester in his soul. He had not 
shut the door of his life upon the bitter experience. An old 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


4 2 

feud leader in a Southern state, a man upon whose gun were 
many notches, was once heard to remark: “ I triumph over 
my inimies agin and agin, and I gits to be a better Christian 
every year.” David ultimately triumphed over Shimei. 
How much better, though, would the story read if he had 
conquered the hatred in his own soul and continued to say, 
“ Let him alone.” 


TRUTH THROUGH ACTIVITY 


If any man will do his will, he shall \now of the 
doctrine . 

John VII, 17. 

The other day I was talking with a college student who 
told me what has become a rather old story to me. As he 
had come into contact with new thought, he naturally had 
relinquished certain of the untenable beliefs of his past 
years. There is nothing intrinsically serious in this. All 
growing minds must get a larger grasp of truth. The sub¬ 
stitution of an enlightened faith for one shot through with 
palpable errors is a mark of spiritual progress. To make 
this change, however, is by no means as easy as it looks. 
Carlyle says: “ Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus 
the Eagle when he moults is sickly; and to attain his new 
beak must harshly dash off the old one upon rocks.” It 
seems that in the modern day the transition to a larger faith 
is not attended with as many agonies as was the case of the 
youth of a generation ago. Yet this does not minimize the 
dangers of a life passing through a creedal revolution. In 
spite of shallow remarks to the contrary, there is a close rela¬ 
tion between creed and conduct. Intellectual confusion is 
very frequently the cause of moral disintegration. When 
Descartes discarded all of his previous knowledge and con¬ 
clusions in order to build from the ground up, he was wise 
in first preparing a strict code by which to regulate his life. 

Bewilderment in regard to belief is not confined to youth. 
The last twenty years has witnessed a world revolution. In 
43 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


44 

practically every field of thought time-honored beliefs have 
been placed in the crucible. Henry van Dyke speaking in 
1896 said: “ The age stands in doubt. Its coat-of-arms is an 
interrogation point rampant, above three bishops dormant, 
and its motto is Query ” Yet the questionings of those days 
were innocuous in comparison with the ones of recent 
decades. The pros and cons of ethical verities which in the 
eighteen-nineties were regarded as fixed as the everlasting 
hills are now discussed as matters in regard to which one 
opinion is as good as another. Many are asking the ques¬ 
tion: “ How are we really to know what we should do and 
what leave undone ? How can we find a standard by which 
to regulate our lives ? ” 

Even in the midst of queries innumerable and apparent 
confusion upon every side, if we really stop to think, it is 
not hard for us to see that in the field of practical ethics 
there are more certainties than uncertainties. If we should 
sit down to write a list of things we know to be right and 
wrong, and then one of the moral questions in regard to 
which we are confused, the length of the latter would be but 
a fraction of that of the former. With this much to work 
from, we can safely follow two principles, the first being to 
live up to those ethical standards of which we are certain 
and the second to avoid any course of action the morality 
of which is questionable in our own minds. 

As we start out upon the life of a new day, as a rule, we 
are not troubled with intellectual confusion. The path of 
duty stretches out comparatively straight before us. The 
big danger is not due to our lack of knowledge but rather to 
our weakness, our lethargy, our pettiness, and our general 
capacity for blundering. Life is not so much a matter of 
finely spun theories and universally applied principles as it 


TRUTH THROUGH ACTIVITY 


45 

is of concrete tasks and everyday responsibilities. Carlyle’s 
advice is highly practical: “ Do the Duty which lies nearest 
thee, which thou knowest to be a duty. Produce! Produce! 
Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, 
produce it in God’s name. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to 
do, do it with thy might.” 

Action tends to dissipate intellectual confusion. If we do 
the will we shall know the doctrine. As we go about those 
ordinary duties which lie nearest us, many theoretical dif¬ 
ficulties work out for themselves. Sitting in a corner and 
spinning mental cobwebs is not a solution for our intel¬ 
lectual problems. Knowledge of any type which has not 
been applied to the rough-and-tumble issues of life is at the 
best evanescent, academic and superficial. Any responsibil¬ 
ity faithfully met is a clarifier of thought. Of course, action 
is not a substitute for thinking, but only when we put into 
application those truths of which we are reasonably certain 
we obtain a greater grasp of truth. When the conscious 
mind becomes fixed on action, the subconscious gets its 
chance. It is in this way that man learns to see deeper into 
reality. He who honestly tries to do right will not be left 
in darkness. 


WEARERS OF SACKCLOTH 


And the people looked, and behold, he had sack¬ 
cloth within upon his flesh . 

II Kings VI, 30. 

Upon hearing of the calamities of his people the king had 
rent his clothes and there beneath the pomp and glitter of 
the trappings of royalty was the drab and unsightly sack¬ 
cloth. A beggar was expected to wear such garb, but no 
one dreamed of finding it upon a king. Yet other kings be¬ 
sides Jehoram of Israel have experienced the disappoint¬ 
ment, the losses and the sorrow which sackcloth symbolizes. 
In fact, all human beings are wearers of sackcloth. Disap¬ 
pointment and adversity are the lot of man. There is no 
life without its shadows. Sometimes those who seem the 
freest from care are the very ones who suffer the most. In 
Sonnet XXIX Shakespeare gives expression to a sense of the 
sadness of life: 

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, 

I all alone beweep my outcast state, 

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 

And look upon myself and curse my fate, 

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, 
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope. 

The man who wrote those ever-to-be-remembered words of 
poetic beauty was feeling the rough touch of sackcloth and 
envying others whom he thought were wearing but the 
46 


WEARERS OF SACKCLOTH 


47 

softest of silks and velvets. But it is more than a probability 
that those whom he envied were wearers of sackcloth just 
as he was. Nobody’s path is entirely smooth. We know of 
our own sackcloth and we do not see our neighbor’s. Con¬ 
sequently we infer that he does not even know what it is. 
The more we see of life, the more we realize that each heart 
knoweth its own bitterness. Each hidden garment of sack¬ 
cloth is in some way different from every other one. In 
these days for many it is a worry about material things. No 
matter how sneeringly we may speak about grubbing for 
money, the lack of it is a handicap in the attaining of some 
of the genuine blessings of life. Today there are thousands 
who once believed that they had so managed their lives that 
they need never fear poverty, hearing the baying of the 
wolves at their door. Others who looked forward to a ces¬ 
sation of labor and a degree of comfort in life’s eventide find 
themselves back at the beginning of the road. Some are suf¬ 
fering that sense of futility and hopelessness which comes to 
him who can find no chance to work for his daily bread. 

There may be those of us whose hearts are torn with 
thoughts of the disloyalty of someone whom we had be¬ 
lieved to be our friend. Or perhaps we have been talking 
with one of those pestilential human beings who use their 
friends as pincushions and by means of nastily barbed 
phrases sting their hearts. Some in any group are disap¬ 
pointed over the great gulf fixed between what they have 
accomplished and what they once dreamed of doing. Now 
and then we are all oppressed with the sense of the futility 
of our lives and we wonder whether the struggle aught 
availeth. 

There may be, however, some advantages in the wearing 
of sackcloth. In the school of disappointment we can learn 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


48 

lessons long and deep. Everything that happens is not for 
the best, but all of our misfortunes can teach us something. 
In years far in the future we shall give thanks for some of 
our disappointments of today. Josh Billings once said: “ It 
is a good thing for a dog to have fleas; it helps him to re¬ 
member that he is a dog.” An absolutely unhandicapped 
life never develops strength of character and personality. 
Hours come when we should say with Browning: 

Then, welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth’s smoothness rough, 

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! 

Whatever great truths we may learn in the school of our 
disappointments, garments of sackcloth are not always com¬ 
fortable. Untoward circumstances do not invariably beau¬ 
tify a soul. Many of us allow our difficulties to warp our 
tempers. When clouds obscure the sun we lose faith in man 
and God. 

Upon the white sea sand 
There sat a pilgrim band 
Telling the losses that their lives had known, 

While evening waned away 
From breezy cliff and bay, 

And the strong tides went out with weary moan. 
There were some who mourned their youth 
With a most tender ruth, 

For the brave hopes and memories ever green; 

And one upon the West 

Turned an eye that would not rest 

For the fair hills whereon its joys had been. 

Some talked of vanished gold, 

Some of proud honors told, 


WEARERS OF SACKCLOTH 


49 


Some spake of friends who were their friends no more; 

And one of a green grave 

Far beyond the wave 

While he sits here so lonely on the shore. 

But when their tales were done, 

There spoke among them one, 

A stranger, seeming from all sorrow free: 

“ Sad losses ye have met, 

But mine is sadder yet, 

For the believing heart has gone from me.” 

If our difficulties and our sorrows embitter our souls their 
presence in our lives is an unmitigated calamity, but if in 
spite of our sackcloth we face whatever comes with un¬ 
diminished faith and dauntless spirits, we have turned our 
misfortunes to glorious gain. 


THE LIFE-GIVING RIVER 


Everything shall live whither the river cometh. 

Ezekiel XLVII, 9. 

These words are redolent of the poetry of the Orient. They 
bring before us a picture of a gray plain crossed by a green- 
banked river. The landscape is arid, sterile and barren, but 
whither the river floweth there is the gleam of pulsating, 
vibrant life. The parable of this imagery is not hard to dis¬ 
cern. It conveys the idea that only is there real life where 
the river of spirituality flows. Jeremiah used essentially the 
same figure when he referred to God as “ the Fountain of 
Living Waters.” And it was the same clear-visioned seer 
who, in an hour of despondency, fearing that God had gone 
out of his life expressed his sense of desolation in language 
suggestive of the watercourses of Palestine in a time of sum¬ 
mer drought: “ Wilt Thou indeed be unto me as a deceitful 
brook, as waters that fail ? ” And no one can come into 
contact with these words of oriental poetry without thinking 
of the familiar and well-loved words: “ He leadeth me be¬ 
side the still waters. He restoreth my soul.” 

Paul expressed the same thought in prose when he said: 
“ To be spiritually-minded is life, but to be carnally-minded 
is death.” Wherever we turn we can see that life is starved, 
dwarfed and circumscribed where there is a famine of 
spirituality. At a certain place in the mountains of West 
Virginia there is an unusually beautiful river scene, which 
I always look forward to beholding. But in the summer of 


THE LIFE-GIVING RIVER 


51 

1930 when I went to that region I was deeply disappointed. 
Instead of seeing the glory of the mountain stream with its 
swirling foam, its glittering eddies and its gleaming pools, 
I saw a weed-grown bed of stones with a slender stream of 
stagnant water sluggishly meandering through the middle. 
And there are segments of our national life where a 
drought has dried up the rivers of spirituality. It is easy 
indeed to be too conscious of the darker side of the picture. 
But a spiritual drought is just as real as one that is physical, 
although it cannot be so readily seen. 

It would require considerable audacity to characterize Sin¬ 
clair Lewis as a preacher. Neither the author nor the pro¬ 
fession would appreciate such a classification, but Main 
Street is a book which preaches a sermon. It depicts an 
absolutely despiritualized community, one through which 
the river does not flow. It is to be most earnestly hoped that 
Gopher Prairie is not a typical American town. The book, 
however, does prove with a high degree of conclusiveness 
that a community devoid of spirituality is not fit to live in. 
And there is a more recent book, not fiction, which does not 
give us any special reasons for optimism in regard to the 
creative spirituality of the typical American city. Mr. and 
Mrs. Lynd in their joint work, Middletown, have made an 
intensive study of a small middle western city. To say that 
this thorough study presents a community devoid of in¬ 
terest in the higher things of life would be untrue. Yet no 
one can read the book without being impressed with the 
fact that things seem to be in the saddle in Middletown, that 
the main trends of life are frivolous and materialistic. And 
the tragedy of the situation is that this city represents a cross- 
section of our national life. Yes, even the most unmitigated 
optimist must confess that the life-giving river is not flowing 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


52 

through modern America with anything like a torrential 
force. 

One cannot turn to the writings of discriminating stu¬ 
dents of the spiritual significance of life without reading 
words which impress us that we are living in a time of 
crisis. Dr. Albert C. Knudson makes the arresting state¬ 
ment that “Not since the third century has Christianity 
passed through such a dangerous and difficult pass as that 
which confronts it in our own day.” Dr. Harris E. Kirk 
says: “ It is my conviction that there has been a serious de¬ 
cline in religious interest in our time.” It is not exaggerat¬ 
ing to say that thousands of sentences like these can be 
culled from the writings of prophets of today. To be sure, 
there is always a danger of the idealist seeing only the darker 
side of the picture, yet there does not seem to be the slightest 
doubt that we are passing through one of the ever-recurring 
periods of spiritual stagnation. 

In an address delivered at a dinner in honor of his sev¬ 
entieth birthday, John Dewey made the statement that in 
his opinion “ externalism ” is the most distinctive charac¬ 
teristic of the American people. We judge life and its 
values by the coarse, crude, false standards of which Rabbi 
Ben Ezra speaks: 

Things done, that took the eye and had the price; 

O’er which from level stand, 

The low world laid its hand, 

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice. 

We apotheosize the practical, the specific and the concrete. 
We forget that the great values are the imponderables. We 
measure success in terms of commodities and come to the 


THE LIFE-GIVING RIVER 53 

place where we really believe that a man’s life does consist 
in the abundance of things which he possesseth. 

In such a civilization there seems to be no place for the 
soul. Years ago I knew a beautiful stream which sparkled 
through a rural valley. But a mineral wealth was found 
beneath the hills. Mines were opened. A town grew up 
along the little river. Mills and factories were built, and 
the town became a city. Today the bed of that once fair 
stream is almost filled with the debris of the factory region 
through which it flows. The waters which a generation ago 
flowed crystal-clear from mountain streams are now dis¬ 
colored and polluted. “ Everything shall live whither the 
river cometh.” Even in this world where there is so much 
of the tangible, the ponderable and the material it is not 
impossible for the life-giving stream to have a free course 
in our lives. The letter killeth; the spirit giveth life. The 
material deadeneth; the spiritual quickeneth. It may be 
somewhat harder to keep the channel open in our souls for 
the refreshing, cleansing, vivifying waters of the divine 
current, but the task is not impossible. There is no insu¬ 
perable barrier between the soul of man and the eternal 
God. If the roots of our lives are freshened and enriched 
by the vitalizing power of the life-giving river, as the swift 
seasons roll our souls will build more stately mansions and 
from our lives there will emanate a radiant strength which 
in itself will evidence the reality of the invisible, the su¬ 
premacy of the spiritual. 


A DAUNTLESS FAITH 


But if not . . . 

Daniel III, 18. 

Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, had set up a statue 
ninety feet high and nine feet wide and had sent forth the 
edict that anybody who failed to bow down and worship 
this image would be cast into a fiery furnace. Word soon 
came to him that three young Hebrews had disobeyed his 
command. They were called into his presence and threat¬ 
ened with the fiery furnace. And they replied: “ If it be so, 
our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burn¬ 
ing fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of thy hand, 
O King. But if not, be it known unto thee, O King, that 
we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image 
which thou hast set up.” In the language of today we can 
express their thought in these words: “We believe that our 
God will deliver us from the furnace and from thy hand, 
but if not, even then we are going to follow the course 
which we believe to be right.” The spirit of these men was: 
“ Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” Dean Farrar 
once said that these words, “ But if not,” are among the 
most sublime in the whole Scripture. 

God delivered these men from the furnace, but not always 
has he seen fit to protect his followers from physical harm. 
In Hebrews XI, “ The Westminster Abbey of the Bible,” 
we read of those who “ were stoned, were sawn asunder, 
were tempted, were slain with the sword.” The history of 
our faith is a story of heroism to the point of martyrdom. 

54 


A DAUNTLESS FAITH 


55 

Not always is the path of right the road to affluence and 
honor. If virtue were always tangibly rewarded it would 
not be virtue. There are times when truth marches to the 
scaffold and wrong sits upon the throne. 

In a day of ethical confusion, when many of the old stand¬ 
ards have apparently been discarded and some of the new 
ones proved false and futile, when it is questionable whether 
man will humanize the machine or the machine brutalize 
man, when in the midst of material blessings the like of 
which the world has never seen, armies of hopeless, starving 
men walk the streets of every American city, he who would 
walk in truth needs the dauntless faith of these young men 
of the long ago, the faith which says, “ But if not —To 
say that God always delivers his people from poverty, from 
suffering and sorrow, is to make a statement that flies in the 
face of all the facts of life, but it is an indubitable truth that 
God does help his children to bear the burdens which they 
are called to shoulder. An old-time Puritan preacher said 
that instead of the psalmist longing for wings to fly away 
from the troubles of life he should have prayed for the 
strength of an ox that he might bear them. “ As thy day is, 
so shall thy strength be.” 


TARRYING AT SEIR 


Ye have compassed this mountain long enough . 

Turn you northward. 

Deuteronomy II, 3. 

When the children of Israel reached the great mountain 
ridge extending from the Dead Sea on the east to the Gulf 
of Akabah on the Red Sea, they made a long halt. Just how 
long they stopped there no one will ever know, but the inci¬ 
dent is described thus by Moses: “Then we turned, and 
took our journey into the wilderness by way of the Red Sea, 
as the Lord spake unto me, saying, ‘ Ye have compassed this 
mountain long enough; turn you northward.’” It is not 
hard to read between the lines here that the children of 
Israel were allowing themselves to be controlled by the prev¬ 
alent human characteristic to stay in one place rather than 
to press on to new fields of achievement. 

An old Indian chief once expressed his philosophy of life 
as follows: “Walking is better than running; standing is 
better than walking; but lying down is best of all.” Inertia 
is a characteristic deeply imbedded in humanity. No matter 
how radical we consider ourselves, we are inclined to follow 
the routine of yesterday rather than to blaze new trails. It 
is always easier to dream over the gilded memories of other 
years than it is to face the stern realities of today. 

Some of us can never get away from the mountain of 
our past successes. Many a time a man who has occupied an 
important position, or has done a piece of work with out¬ 
standing efficiency, has spent the rest of life in happy but 
56 


TARRYING AT SEIR 


57 

useless retrospect. It is always a tragedy when the achieve¬ 
ment of the past paralyzes the activity of the present. Some¬ 
times a Christian looks longingly back to some mountain- 
peak experience in such a way as to cause him to forget 
present responsibilities. Perhaps he says with William 
Cowper: 

Where is the blessedness I knew 
When first I saw the Lord? 

The soul-refreshing view 
Of Jesus and his Word. 

These are beautiful words, but Christianity is not a religion 
simply of the past. Present duties and future responsibilities 
both are a part of its challenge. 

Then, too, it is easy for us to tarry by the mountain of our 
past failures. Mark Twain once spoke of “ a lasting mortifi¬ 
cation.” We all have them, but we must see to it that they 
do not undermine our confidence and poison our lives. We 
hear much today of inferiority complexes. Very often they 
are the result of dwelling too much upon the memory of the 
failures and the mortifications of the past. It has also hap¬ 
pened that men and women have cherished grudges year 
after year and have spent hours bemoaning injuries, real or 
fancied, which should have long since been forgotten. 
Sometimes the slogan “ Stop Forgetting ” should be paral¬ 
leled with “ Stop Remembering.” 

One time as John Wanamaker and the Polish artist, 
Munkacsy, stood in Wanamaker’s gallery looking at the pic¬ 
ture “ Christ Before Pilate ” which Munkacsy had painted 
years before, the artist turned to the owner and said: “ This 
is my greatest work. I shall never do anything else as fine 
as that.” As Wanamaker told of the incident he said: “ It 


58 TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 

seemed to me a great pity that the artist should have looked 
upon his achievement in that way; that he should have felt 
that he had done his best in the past and that there was noth¬ 
ing better ahead of him.” How different was the attitude of 
Augustus St. Gaudens when someone said to him: “ Mr. St. 
Gaudens, is not your statue of Lincoln your greatest work ? ” 
Without an instant’s hesitation the sculptor responded, “ My 
next work is always my greatest.” Here there was no tarry¬ 
ing about the mountains of the past but a spirit of facing 
the future and its opportunities. 


THE INEVITABLE BATTLE 


There hath no temptation ta\en you hut such as is 
common to man . 

I Corinthians X, 13. 

Some of the Christians in Corinth were making a tragic 
failure in their spiritual lives because they were minimizing 
the seriousness of the temptations which surrounded them. 
They believed that because they were living in the wicked 
city of Corinth they were tempted worse than anybody else 
had ever been, and in basing the view upon this assumption 
they took it for granted that God would be somewhat more 
merciful in judging them than he would be with the rest 
of humanity. Of course they were wrong in thinking that 
they were the most tempted people who ever lived. And it 
did not take Paul very long to tell them so. He had seen 
somewhat more of the world than most of the Christians of 
Corinth. He knew more than any of them about the bat- 
des which must be fought by all of those who would walk 
in truth. Therefore, he understood that although these 
men and women of Corinth were trying to serve God under 
very discouraging conditions, they were facing a situation 
no worse than that against which many other human beings 
had been called to struggle. With this thought in mind he 
says to them, “ There hath no temptation taken you but 
such as is common to man.” 

The Corinthian Christians were not the first people in the 
history of the world to believe that they were tempted worse 
than anybody else. Neither were they the last. Men are 
59 


6o 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


doing the same thing today. Years ago when I was a boy 
on the farm, one day when I was “ working on the roads ” 
I heard a man who should have known better using some 
unspeakably vile language. When a colored man rebuked 
him for his blasphemy he apologized and said: “ I know 
that I am not a very good man, but I guess that I am about 
as good as any other fellow would be if he were standing in 
my shoes.” I remember wondering in my boyish way why 
this man’s temptations were so much worse than those of 
other people. A few years later when I was employed in a 
large factory I told one of the men who worked near me 
that I expected to go to college the next fall. He said: “ I 
certainly wish you luck, and what’s more, I hope that you 
will be a better man than I have ever been.” Then he 
added: “I guess, though, I have done about as well as I 
could have done under the circumstances. I never had 
much chance.” And again I wondered why right living was 
so much harder for this man than for the rest of faltering 
humanity. 

I have long since learned that wherever I go I will find 
people exaggerating their own temptations and minimizing 
those of others. The reason for this is not hard to find. 
We know ourselves better than anybody else knows us and 
better than we know anyone else. We know of the battles 
between the powers of light and the powers of darkness that 
are fought in our own hearts, but we do not know of the 
struggle which our neighbor is having. Therefore we take 
for granted that we are tempted worse than he is. If this 
made us stand more firmly and fight better it would be well 
and good. But too often, like the people of Corinth, we 
take for granted that the severity of our temptation is an 
excuse for yielding. At all events a tendency to believe that 


THE INEVITABLE BATTLE 


61 


we are called upon to fight the hardest battle that man was 
ever called to wage is, in at least ninety-nine instances out of 
a hundred, based on a false hypothesis. If we ever feel that 
the burden laid upon us is incomparably harder than that 
borne by our friends and associates, let us open our ears 
that we may hear the voice of the heroic aposde of the days 
of the long ago uttering the words, “ There hath no tempta¬ 
tion taken you but such as is common to man.” And when 
men and women all around us are fighting the same battles 
there is no need of our going down in the fight. 


THE FEAR OF TRUTH 


Spea\ unto us smooth sayings; prophesy deceits . 

Isaiah XXX, io. 

In spite of the old epigram that fine words butter no par¬ 
snips, the human race is highly susceptible to their blandish¬ 
ments. Glowingly worded advertisements have separated 
many a gullible investor from the savings of a lifetime. A 
purveyor of unctuous palaver, utterly devoid of either in¬ 
tegrity of intellect or character, can come into a community 
and become its most popular citizen. In politics the ability 
to pour the ointment of gladness upon all things and all 
men has never been regarded as a handicap. The term 
“ good mixer ” as a rule connotes the professional backslap- 
per, the promiscuous caller of first names, the insincere 
dispenser of verbal lollipops. It is easier to listen to what is 
pleasing than to what is true. Amos, the rugged truth¬ 
speaking prophet of Tekoa, thundering his anathemas 
against “ the kine of Bashan,” as he termed the society 
women of Israel, was not one who was gladly heard. 
Neither was Isaiah as he denounced the frivolous daughters 
of Judah with “ stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, 
walking and mincing as they go and making a tinkling 
with their feet.” It was the speaking of the whole truth 
that caused Jeremiah to walk the road of ruthless persecu¬ 
tion. Mankind has through the ages not been an especially 
ardent lover of unvarnished truth. 

After a man had been exposed to the inundations of an 
unrestrained flatterer, he was heard to remark: “ Isn’t that 
62 


THE FEAR OF TRUTH 


6 3 

fellow a liar? I must confess, though, that I rather liked 
what he said.” Listening to pleasant words which in our 
hearts we know to be false is vitiating to the character. The 
person who hears only what he wants to hear eventually 
becomes intellectually deaf. John Ruskin once said: “ The 
more I think of it the more I find this conclusion impressed 
upon me, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in 
this world is to see something and tell what it is in a plain 
way.” No man can preserve his integrity if he closes the 
door of his senses to the plain facts of life. 

There is a certain type of ostentatious optimist who stead¬ 
ily sets his face against listening to undiluted truth. There 
are two kinds of optimism. One is based on confidence in 
mankind, belief in the triumph of right, and faith in the 
justice of God. The other is the result of a dishonest and 
cowardly tendency to gloss over all those aspects of life, 
the recognition of which might interfere with our com¬ 
placency. It is the exemplifier of the latter type who says, 
“ Speak unto us smooth sayings.” His voice has not been 
unheard in the America of the last two years. Neither have 
prophets of deceit and dishonesty been lacking. In the pres¬ 
ence of millions of unemployed, of closed banks, of starving 
children, leaders in state and business have denied the exist¬ 
ence of the poverty and tragedy which have stalked abroad 
in every corner of our country. Under such conditions 
statements of this kind are confessions of mental bankruptcy 
and fundamental dishonesty. Honest men speak the truth 
and are willing to hear it. 

Years ago I heard a young teacher say: “ I did poor teach¬ 
ing this morning. I must try to do better tomorrow.” An¬ 
other man said, “ I had a fine time.” Long since have I 
learned that the individual who always has a roseate sense 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


64 

of the sufficiency of his performances is a bungler. The 
recognition of failures is one of the first steps in the direction 
of efficiency. The ability to take intelligent criticism is an 
evidence of breadth of soul and power of growth. Smooth 
sayings never interfere with self-satisfaction. They do not 
jolt us out of ruts of inefficiency. They bring no clouds into 
our azure sky. Therefore we enjoy them. But the retailer 
of complimentary banalities never does anybody much good. 
His insincere effusions minister to the vanity of the weak¬ 
ling, but strong men do not need them. In fact the man of 
strength will not listen to them. He is ready to look the 
truth squarely in the face and regulate his life accordingly. 

In spite of the never ceasing demand for smooth sayings, 
there is just as constant a need for those who will speak the 
truth, palatable or unpalatable, in words of unmistakable 
meaning and convincing power. 


THE TRAGEDY OF THE SECOND CHANCE 


And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. 
And he bowed himself with all his might; and the 
house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people 
that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his 
death were more than they which he slew in his 
life. 

Judges XVI, 30. 

Thus ended the life of Samson. In the turbulent stream of 
those bloody days of old his physical prowess made him a 
tower of strength to Israel in the warfare with her enemies, 
but through his own moral weakness he falls into their 
hands. They put out his eyes and utilize his strong arms 
and mighty shoulders by putting him to work grinding 
their grain, using for the Philistines that strength which had 
been given him to wage war against them. But there comes 
a time when he once more can strike a blow for Israel. The 
old blind champion is brought into the hall of Dagon. 
“ Now the house was full of men and women; and all the 
lords of the Philistines were there.” They stand him be¬ 
tween two middle pillars and the hooting mob are snarling 
around him and then “ he bowed himself with all his 
might; and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the 
people that were therein.” And Samson dies in the midst 
of his enemies. This was the tragedy of Samson’s second 
chance. 

Samson through silliness and sin had frittered away the 
opportunities of his life’s morning. Life, however, is not a 
65 


66 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


matter of simply one chance. God is merciful to blunderers. 
In spite of aphorisms to the contrary, opportunity knocks 
at a man’s door more than once. Samson did have a second 
chance. Yet how different it was from the first! In his 
youth we see him robustiously running up and down the 
land with his long black hair floating like a banner behind 
him, playing his wild pranks. The story of Samson is by 
no means devoid of the elements of comedy. Life was very 
much of a joke for the young Samson. How different is 
the other picture! The grizzled blind giant stands sur¬ 
rounded by his enemies, yelping like puppies teasing a 
wounded lion. Into his sluggish mind there comes the 
thought of winning one more victory over the Philistines. 
He acts and the tragi-comedy of Samson is over. 

The second chance is never the same as the first. Noth¬ 
ing can make the past never to have been. When the prodi¬ 
gal turned his steps homeward he found his father ready to 
receive him and forgive him. But that did not bring back 
the lost years and the wasted opportunities. The substance 
which he had spent in riotous living was gone forever. It 
is altogether probable that those years in the far country 
had depleted him both physically and mentally. Repent¬ 
ance in itself cannot mend a broken constitution or entirely 
undo the past. A wrong once done can never be entirely 
righted. After wild oats is sown it cannot be transformed 
into wheat. The results of a godless, or even of a careless, 
life cannot be cast aside overnight. 

But the second chance is worth while. Even if the morn¬ 
ing has been wasted, something of value may be accom¬ 
plished at eventide. One may at the close of a life of wasted 
strength, wasted talent, wasted years, do that which will in 
part compensate for that which was left undone. The 


THE TRAGEDY OF THE SECOND CHANCE 67 

doors of the father’s house are ever open. His arms re¬ 
ceive the prodigal. Gates of opportunity may swing wide 
to receive the wanderer. Yet this does not mean that the 
wrong is to be extenuated. Sometimes men who have lived 
lives of wickedness and have been transformed by the re¬ 
newing of their spirits are prone to give the impression that 
their years of wrongdoing have enhanced their later useful¬ 
ness. Loose talk of this kind is not productive of good. 
The “ reformed trainrobber ” who has become an evangel¬ 
ist, in his boasting of his former wickedness and his pres¬ 
ent beatitude, is likely to mislead rather than to help. In 
preaching the gospel of the second chance it behooves us to 
avoid palliating evil. 

From the very nature of things the first chance has in it 
the more possibilities for usefulness and joy. To waste it 
is to subtract from the effectiveness of our lives. It is cast¬ 
ing into the sea priceless jewels which we shall never find 
again. The first chance has about it the joy of the morning, 
the vigor of youth. The second may mean trying to make 
up in the late afternoon for hours of carelessness and sin. 
The very term, Second Chance, implies a desperate effort to 
undo the consequences of earlier failure. 


THE ACID TEST 


Wherefore by their fruits ye shall \now them . 

Matthew VII, 20. 

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance. 

Galatians V, 22, 23. 

One night many years ago, while I was sitting in the dark 
on a porch near the sidewalk, I overheard a conversation 
between two women which gave me some food for thought. 
They were discussing a brother of their church who had 
fallen from grace under especially reprehensible circum¬ 
stances. During the course of the discussion one of them 
said: “ Of course, he is a bad man, but he is sound in the 
doctrine.” Then and there the thought came to me that the 
best evidence of the genuine soundness of doctrine is a 
good life. A man’s creed is not that which he more or less 
ostentatiously professes, but that which he so earnestly be¬ 
lieves that it determines the course of his life. Phillips 
Brooks once said: “It is not by their roots that ye know 
them but by their fruits.” 

Most of us at some time or other in our lives have come 
into contact with that travesty of religion which regards the 
use of certain threadbare pious phrases as an evidence of 
spirituality. Another similar spurious test is the singing 
with gusto songs of platitudinous cant, lacking all of the 
noble qualities of the fine old hymns that come to us across 
68 


THE ACID TEST 


69 

the stormy seas and the snowy peaks of the centuries. In 
my boyhood days I knew a man who each year professed 
conversion on the first or second night of the annual revival. 
During the following weeks he was very active in the serv¬ 
ices, leading the singing with much enthusiasm. Within 
ten days after the meetings closed he would get drunk and 
chase his long-suffering wife and family from the house. 
One could sympathize with anyone in the grip of a bad 
habit against which he was trying to battle unsuccessfully. 
But as I look across the years and try to analyze the incon¬ 
gruities of this man’s life I am inclined to believe that the 
trouble was that he regarded religion as an emotional de¬ 
bauch unconnected with the problems of daily life. 

In her novel, Country People, Ruth Suckow gives a con¬ 
vincing picture of a stingy old German Methodist farmer 
who combined an emotional piety with a number of exceed¬ 
ingly unadmirable qualities. He was a ruthless taskmaster 
to the men who worked on his farm and lost no opportunity 
to defraud them of their pay. Occasionally moldy bread 
and spoiled meat were offered them at meals. The story was 
told through the township that once when a widow in town 
needed a little straw, which most farmers would gladly 
have given her, he charged her a high price and an addi¬ 
tional sum for hauling it. Every Sunday, however, he was 
in church. The preachers were afraid of him as he sat 
there mumbling disapprobation if the sermon displeased 
him, because it dealt too much with honesty, kindness, jus¬ 
tice, and other subjects which he called “ worldly.” But if 
there was an emotional appeal the tears would roll down his 
face. This illustration comes from a work of fiction. Yet 
there are few of us who cannot duplicate it from life. 

Genuine religion is not primarily intellectual or emo- 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


70 

tional, but practical. Paul tells us what the fruits of the 
spirit really are. His words to the Galatians make the idea 
of the fruitful life definite and concrete. He first mentions 
love and then joy. A life festering with hatred cannot be 
Christian. Even the rather stern, tensely earnest apostle to 
the Gentiles recognized that Christianity is not a religion of 
gloom but of joy. One of the most palpable misunderstand¬ 
ings of the religion of Jesus Christ ever written is expressed 
in the lines of Swinburne: 

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean, 

The world has grown grey with thy breath! 

The characteristics included in the list connote a well- 
balanced life. Temperance means self-mastery and practical 
effectiveness. Other fruits of the spirit like peace, longsuf- 
fering, gentleness and meekness all have to do with our 
relations to our fellow men. We all make demands upon 
the patience of those with whom we are associated. There¬ 
fore, it behooves us to be tolerant of the defects of others. 
There is no better evidence of real Christianity than the pos¬ 
session of qualities like gentleness, goodness and meekness 
which make us able to live peaceably with other human 
beings and work effectively with them. But Paul does not 
forget to include faith, which means power to hear the 
music of the spheres, to respond to the call of the highest, to 
rise above the lowlands to the shining heights of spiritual 
achievement. 


CLOUDS OF WITNESSES 


Where]ore seeing we also are compassed about with 
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every 
weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, 
and let us run with patience the race that is set be - 
fore us. 

Hebrews XII, i. 

Ma n is a bom hero ^wofshiper. Pr actically ever y civilize d 
cou ntry ha s__set^apart d ays upon jwhich to honor her illus¬ 
trious sons. We commemorate the sacrifices of those who 
fought and died on the field of carnage. In recent years we 
have become more prone to notice the centenaries of men 
of great achievement in letters, statecraft, art, invention and 
other fields of activity. Although this has been responsible 
for some oratory full of nothing but sound and fury, it is in 
the main to be highly commended. We cannot honor too 
much those who have gone before. Hard indeed would it 
be to overestimate our debt to preceding generations. We 
are heirs of all the ages. The blessings of modern life are 
due to the toil, the sacrifice and the vision of those who 
blazed the trails ahead of us. 

The words of this text immediately follow that great 
chapter which, because it contains the names of the moun¬ 
tain-peak men of Hebrew history, is called “ The West¬ 
minster Abbey ” of the New Testament. Name after name 
is mentioned. A braham / svhnJiy_fait h went out into a far_. 
cou ntry, no t knowing whithersoever h e went, M o ses who 
en dured as s eeing him who is i nvisible , Gideon, Barak, Sain- 
son, Jephtha, David, Samuel and the prophets. And the 












TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


7 2 

eloquent author of this noble chapter doe s not forget t he 
unknown TieroesTtKosejwho were “ stoned, were saw n asun - 
der, jyere tempted, were slain with the sword: they wan¬ 
dered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, 
aflTicted,~ tormented?’ When we remember the world’s 
heritage from theHebrew people, it impresses upon us the 
truth that we, too, are the spiritual heirs of this glorious 
company. 

Any man has reason to be grateful for what he has in¬ 
herited from clean-blooded, right-living ancestors. But we 
have a spiritual ancestry as well. The statesmen, the poets, 
the prophets of other generations are among the clouds of 
witnesses who encompass us. We are grateful to the in¬ 
ventor who has added to the comfort of life and to him who 
has made two blades of grass grow where but one grew be¬ 
fore. Great, however, as such service might be, it is not 
comparable to that of him who has given to us a clearer 
vision of God, freedom, and immortality. Upon America’s 
roll of honor no names shine brighter than those of the 
circuit riders, those men with the saddlebags who kept the 
fires of spirituality burning upon the altars of our frontier 
life. Sometimes, as I comfortably glide over the smooth 
roads of West Virginia, I remember how in the midst of 
the snows of winter Francis Asbury rode across the moun¬ 
tains from the Greenbrier country to what he called the 
“ Tyger’s Valley.” I think, too, of other men who in a later 
day traveled over roads which today we would call impas¬ 
sable, on their far-flung circuits. Many a one of them 
reached his destination so frozen that he had to be helped 
from his horse. When we begin to recount those of other 
generations to whom we are indebted we are compelled to 
say like the author of Hebrews, “ Time would fail me.” 










CLOUDS OF WITNESSES 


73 

Words are not always futile. Fitting it is that we should 
commemorate the achievements of the great and good of 
other years. That, however, is not enough; in these words 
quoted times innumerable in recent years there is a thought 
that we should not be allowed to forget: 

To you, from failing hands, we throw 
The torch; be yours to hold it high. 

If ye break faith with us who die 
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 
In Flanders Fields. 

The story is told of a famous English statesman who took 
his son into a family portrait gallery and said: “ My boy, 
you must hear these people speak ”; and pointing to various 
portraits he continued: “ This one says, Be true to me. That 
one says, Be true to yourself. That one, Be true to your 
home. And that one of my mother says, Be true to God.” 

Each one of the cloud of witnesses that encompass us has 
his own message for us. The great battles of humanity 
have not all been fough t. Each generation has its own re¬ 
sponsibility and its own challenge. What has already been 
accomplished is but a prelude to that which is yet to be done. 
Goethe says: 

He only gains and keeps his life and freedom 
Who daily conquers them anew. 

What our fathers won for us can be lost by carelessness, 
lethargy, frivolity. And the memory of the priceless gifts 
which have come to us from those of other generations is in 
itself a call to us to make our contribution to the betterment 
of the world that is to be. 




THE PARADOX OF GROWTH 


For unto every one that hath shall be given and he 
shall have abundance: but from him that hath not 
shall be taken away even that which he hath. 

Matthew XXV, 29. 

The language which Jesus spoke was the picturesque, color¬ 
ful imagery of the Orient. I was once laboriously trying to 
explain to a Sunday-school class the meaning of this passage 
when one of the members interrupted with the remark that 
the thought of Jesus was expressed in the highly ungram¬ 
matical but expressive proverb, “ Them that has gits.” 

On the surface this is not an especially encouraging 
thought. It impresses us as hardly just that the universe 
is so constructed that more is given to the one who already 
has, and nothing to him who has the greater need. The first 
question, however, is not whether this law is hard or merci¬ 
ful, not even whether it is just or unjust, but whether it is 
false or true. It might be suggested that the fact that Jesus 
uttered these words is absolute evidence of their truthful¬ 
ness. Nevertheless, it is worth while for us to try to think 
this passage through for ourselves. A general truth is mys¬ 
tifying rather than helpful to one who accepts it without 
comprehending it. 

Yet none of us has to go very far to see the workings of 
this law of life. If a man has property it is not hard for him 
to add to his possessions. This is true also of health. It is 
easy for a vigorous man to increase his vigor. Exercise 
which would weaken and debilitate another, adds to the 
74 


THE PARADOX OF GROWTH 


75 

strength of the one already strong. We see this illustrated 
also in the acquisition of knowledge. The more we know, 
the more easily we can learn new truths. Two men, both 
with some knowledge of American history, rode down the 
old Pike of the Valley of Virginia. At the end of their day’s 
travel each knew more history than he had known when he 
started out in the morning. On the other hand, thousands 
of tourists had traveled the same day through the same 
region without acquiring an iota of historical knowledge. 

A friend and I had an afternoon in Philadelphia to spend 
as we saw fit. He suggested that we visit the Academy of 
Natural Science. I rather unenthusiastically consented. We 
spent three mortal hours walking past cases full of speci¬ 
mens of minerals. My friend was a geologist and the more 
we saw the more enthusiastic he became. To me all stones 
looked very much alike and none of them was especially 
interesting. Long before the three hours had passed I 
reached the place where I was unable even to simulate a 
scintilla of interest,’ but my companion was so engrossed in 
minerals that he never noticed my air of patient boredom. 
At last the time of release came. As we walked from the 
building he said: “I have certainly enjoyed the afternoon 
and I have learned a lot, too. Haven’t you? ” The after¬ 
noon had been one of intellectual profit to him because he 
knew something to start with. To me it was unmitigated 
tediousness for the simple reason that I had taken no geo¬ 
logical knowledge with me to the museum. He had some¬ 
thing. Therefore, more was given to him. I had nothing. 
Consequently I left the building at a lower ebb of intellec¬ 
tual efficiency than when I entered. 

That this law is true cannot be controverted. It is, how¬ 
ever, not so hard as it looks. The whole truth of life cannot 


j 6 TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 

be expressed in one brief sentence. We can proceed on the 
assumption that to all of us something is given. One has 
this gift and another that. And whether our gift multiplies 
or atrophies depends upon the use we make of it. This law 
of growth and deterioration as expressed in the words of 
Jesus follows the parable of the talents. Not one of the 
men in the parable was ignored in the distribution of talents. 
The unprofitable servant was not condemned because he 
had so little at the start. That would have been a palpable 
injustice. He was excoriated for not using that which was 
given to him. That which is utilized increases. An unused 
muscle becomes weaker, one that is constantly exercised 
grows stronger. An idea that is not expressed becomes faint 
and nebulous. A thought explained to someone else is 
thereby clarified. A faith no larger than a grain of mustard 
seed, if given the right of way in a life, may become the 
nucleus of a vital and fruitful creed. If we follow what 
light we have, more is given to us. To him who uses that 
which he hath, be it great or small, more is always given. 


REAL CO-OPERATION 


They helped every one his neighbor; and every one 
said to his brother, Be of good courage . So the 
carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that 
smootheth with the hammer him that smote the 
anvil, saying, It is ready for the soldering: and he 
fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved . 

Isaiah XLI, 6, 7. 

These two verses, not especially well known and appar¬ 
ently not related to their context, give a colorful and con¬ 
vincing picture of men working together. Each one is 
performing his own task and at the same time doing what 
he can to help his neighbor. Human aptitudes differ. One 
man can perform with ease and skill a task which another 
would bungle. Ralph Waldo Emerson was decidedly awk¬ 
ward at physical labor. Some of the older Concordians used 
to tell how his little son, seeing him in his garden awk¬ 
wardly manipulating a shovel, said: “ Be careful, father, 
you are digging your foot.” The early life of U. S. Grant 
is the history of a succession of failures. Phillips Brooks 
upon his graduation from Harvard accepted a position as 
teacher in the Boston Latin School and after a few months’ 
trial was dismissed for incompetency. Thomas Carlyle 
floundered around in discouragement until he was almost 
forty. Often life’s greatest struggle is this process of adjust¬ 
ment of individual ability to the work of the world. It was 
in all probability Carlyle’s own bitter experience which 
taught him the far-reaching truth expressed in the words: 

77 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


78 

“ Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no 
other blessedness.” 

In an old graveyard is found the inscription: 

Don’t weep for me now, 

Don’t weep for me never, 

I’m going to do nothing 
Forever and ever. 

It is rather doubtful if anywhere there is a place where one 
can do nothing “ forever and ever.” At least as far as this 
world is concerned a life of that kind would be the epitome 
of futility. There is a camp-meeting spiritual which has in 
it the lines: 

O Joshua, the son of Nun, 

He wouldn’t stop till his work was done. 

Every time I hear it, I feel like saying: “ Good for Joshua, 
the son of Nun.” The man who has found a task into 
which he can put his whole soul is favored among the sons 
of men. In a day when millions of men and women are 
seeking in vain for such an opportunity, when the youth 
who has completed his education is finding all doors closed, 
Isaiah’s picture of the workers of the ancient days is po¬ 
tently appealing. 

Its charm, moreover, is enhanced by the fact that each one 
is encouraging the other. All of us as we go about the tasks 
of life need the renewed inspiration which comes to us from 
a word of commendation. The struggle at the best is hard 
and our blunders are not few. There is always a great gulf 
between what we really accomplish and what we would 
like to achieve. A brotherly “ Be of good courage ” is often 
in itself a dynamic which strengthens the soul. The in- 


REAL CO-OPERATION 


79 

vigorating power of an encouraging word can hardly be 
exaggerated. 

Most of us remember with gratitude someone who spoke 
an enheartening word at a time when we needed it. Years 
ago when I was a very youthful college professor I was 
asked to preach on a special occasion for which I prepared 
my material with the utmost care. The document is still in 
my possession and when I read it over the other day I 
modestly pronounced it “ a pretty good piece of work for a 
boy.” But there were three preachers with me in the pulpit 
and several others in the pews. My self-confidence was at 
a very low ebb that morning. As the old-time preachers 
used to put it, I lacked “ unction ” and at the close of the 
service was in a veritable valley of depression. I needed a 
few crumbs of comfort, but two of the men in the pulpit 
very ostentatiously avoided giving it to me. The other man 
was gracious enough to find something of value in my 
labored effort, and his words of encouragement have been 
an inspiration to me all through the years. 

The man who bids his brother be of good courage is a 
lightener of burdens, a disseminator of inspiration. There 
is not a single day in which opportunities of this kind do 
not come to us. Are we availing ourselves of them? Are 
we co-operating and making easier and more effective the 
life tasks of fellow workers? Wordsworth speaks of that 

best portion of a good man’s life, 

His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love. 

Such acts roll from soul to soul and their influence never 
dies. 


THE NARROW WAY TO THE LIFE 
ABUNDANT 


Strait is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth 
unto life. 

Matthew VII, 14. 

This text, like most of the words of Jesus, needs compara¬ 
tively little explanation. It is so clear that its meaning be¬ 
comes readily apparent to anybody willing to devote a little 
thought to it. When Jesus said “ Strait is the gate and nar¬ 
row the way that leadeth unto life ” he simply gave expres¬ 
sion to the fundamental truth that if we would attain the 
higher values of life we must walk a narrow and definitely 
prescribed pathway, that there are some things which we 
must do and other things which we must refrain from 
doing. 

We live in a world of law. The sun rises and sets in ac¬ 
cord with certain laws. The rain which falls on the just 
and the unjust gives expression to the laws of nature. Even 
the very stars in their courses are swayed by certain fixed 
and immovable laws. One of the first tasks of life which 
confronts each one of us is to learn the laws of nature and 
obey them. Our very existence depends upon our doing 
this. 

Years ago an iron bridge was being built across the St. 
Lawrence River at Quebec. The structure was almost com¬ 
pleted. Hundreds of men were at work on different parts 
of it when without a minute’s warning it collapsed, carry¬ 
ing with it disaster and death. In planning the structure 
80 


THE NARROW WAY TO THE LIFE ABUNDANT 81 

the engineers had made an apparently minor error. But a 
law of mechanics had been violated and the bridge could 
not stand. One Saturday the large and beautiful excursion 
steamer the “ Eastland ” stood in the lake harbor at Chicago. 
Hundreds of holiday pleasure-seekers thronged her decks. 
Too many of them crowded to one side. The boat lurched 
over and the result was tragedy. There had been a conflict 
with the law of gravitation. A few years ago, a man bear¬ 
ing a distinguished name died in a small Eastern city. Al¬ 
though he was but thirty-seven years of age physicians said 
that his body bore all the marks of extreme old age. He had 
played fast and loose with the laws of health, and his senile 
body and early death were the results. No physical law can 
be violated with impunity. 

It is not so easy to discern the presence of moral law, but 
law exists just as truly in the realm of the moral as it does in 
the physical. That certain results follow specific causes is a 
fact of life which has been recognized in all ages. The 
Greek dramatists pictured Nemesis relentlessly pursuing 
him who had violated a law of life and allowing no offense 
to go unpunished. Emerson gives expression to this old but 
ever vital truth in the words: “ Crime and punishment grow 
out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected 
ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. 
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be 
severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end 
pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.” 

Now this is the law of the Jungle, 

As old and as true as the sky. 

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper; 

But the wolf that shall break it must die. 


82 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


But it would be hard to improve upon the statement of this 
fundamental law of the universe which we find in Galatians 
VI: “ Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth 
to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that 
soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. 
And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season 
we shall reap, if we faint not.” Law is universal and cannot 
be escaped. 


THE GRASSHOPPER COMPLEX 


And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and 
so we were in their sight. 

Numbers XIII, 33. 

The word “ complex ” is one very frequently heard these 
days. In the sense in which it is ordinarily used it is a com¬ 
paratively recent addition to the English vocabulary. That 
which it describes, however, is as old as the human race. 
These spies to the promised land were suffering from what 
we would designate by using the well-worn phrase “ inferi¬ 
ority complex.” A man who is obsessed by fear feels ex¬ 
ceedingly insignificant. He is as a grasshopper in his own 
sight and other fallible human beings to him appear to 
bestride the world like giants. 

A knowledge of the fears of an individual is the key to 
the understanding of his personality. In all lives they are 
to be found down under the surface. Years ago I knew a 
man who had risen to wealth from a place of abject poverty. 
He was known throughout the whole countryside for his 
inordinate stinginess. One day in a conversation he acci¬ 
dentally gave me a clue to the reason for his ultra-thriftiness 
by remarking: “ When I think of the poverty and suffering 
of boyhood days I become afraid that something will hap¬ 
pen and put me back where I started.” This was a ground¬ 
less fear. The man’s prosperity was so well established and 
his shrewdness so exceptional that the chances of his sinking 
back into poverty were infinitesimal. There are, however, 
few of us who do not allow other fears even more ridiculous 
83 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


84 

to impede our effectiveness and darken our souls. Perfectly 
well men and women worry about being attacked by this or 
that disease. Others waste hours upon hours worrying over 
the danger of disaster to themselves or their loved ones. In 
the night when the fires of vitality burn low it is easy for us 
to toss upon our beds and imagine all kinds of impending 
misfortunes. 

That which undermines a person’s faith in himself is to be 
avoided as a noisome pestilence. Now and then we meet 
somebody who impresses us as having built a mighty struc¬ 
ture of pride on an exceedingly flimsy foundation, but more 
lives are ruined by self-distrust than by overconfidence. 
Very often the boaster is whistling to keep up courage. The 
men who felt like grasshoppers in the presence of giants 
lacked the first essential of making good soldiers. Lowell 
makes Hosea Biglow say: “Folks thet’s afeerd to fail are 
sure o’ failin’.” Fear is invariably a handicap to efficiency. 
The grasshopper complex vitiates one’s intellectual honesty. 
We are afraid of our thoughts. Instead of facing the facts 
of life and thinking them through for ourselves to a correct 
conclusion we let the addleheaded crowd make our de¬ 
cisions for us. We are disloyal to the right because of our 
fear of the criticism of some human grasshopper whom we 
take to be a giant. Some of the most essential work for 
human betterment is being left undone because those who 
should be doing it are afflicted with the grasshopper com¬ 
plex. 

In mastering the art of right living it is imperative that a 
person get rid of his irrational fears. Stonewall Jackson’s 
motto was, “ Do your duty and leave the rest to providence.” 
He who remembers that if we do our part, God will not fail 
in his, will not dissipate his energy and his talents in cower- 


THE GRASSHOPPER COMPLEX 85 

ing in the shadow of fancied fears. In the chaos of modern 
life, in a time when it seems so hard to find the path to the 
goal, the words of the psalmist come with a power which 
puts faith in the heart and power in the life: “ The Lord is 
my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord 
is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? 


SWORDLESS VICTORIES 


So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling 
and a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; 
but there was no sword in the hand of David. 

I Samuel XVIII, 50. 

The story of the combat between the shepherd boy David 
and the Philistine giant is one of those tales of perennial 
freshness which ever brings to man new visions of life and 
truth. In spite of the almost desperate hope of a war- 
wounded world that mankind will never again be swept 
into the maelstrom of international strife there is enough of 
the primitive in us that we still love to read of 

old unhappy far-off things 
And battles long ago. 

The story of David is rich in human interest. It has to do 
with those aspects of life which are of interest to the men 
and women of every generation. It teaches truths which 
never grow old. 

The incident which brought David into the forefront of 
the life of his people is an illustration of how a man can 
make opportunities. David was not a member of the army 
of Saul. He was only a shepherd boy who had left his flocks 
on the hillside and had come down to the camp to bring 
food to his brothers. When he suggested that he might fight 
the Philistine champion his eldest brother scathingly re¬ 
buked him, saying: “ Why earnest thou down hither? And 
with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness ? 

86 


SWORDLESS VICTORIES 


87 

I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart.” After 
David had secured Saul’s consent to allow him to face 
Goliath, the king put his own armor on David and gave him 
his sword. David found then, as many another man has 
since found, that he could not wage war in another man’s 
equipment. With his shepherd’s sling and five smooth 
stones from the brook David could do more than he could 
have accomplished with the finest armor and the sharpest 
sword in existence. A man can always fight better with his 
own weapons. Many a person despising his own aptitudes 
and powers as insignificant has tried in vain to wield the 
sword of another and has ingloriously failed. A sling in 
the hands of a man who knew how to use it was much more 
potent than the sharpest sword. The use of apparently in¬ 
consequential talent will make its possessor of greater serv¬ 
ice to humanity than a futile attempt to imitate the ability 
of someone else. David showed his caliber in having suffi¬ 
cient self-reliance to fight the battle with his own weapons in 
his own way. 

David probably could not have wielded the spear of 
Goliath any better than he could the sword of Saul. Nobody 
expected much of this shepherd-boy camp follower. If he 
had done nothing whatever he would not have been blamed. 
But David was a doer not a maker of excuses. It is not the 
weapon which counts but the man behind the weapon; not 
the opportunity but the power to use it. The shepherd’s 
sling in the hands of the right man did what the proudest 
warrior in Saul’s army could not accomplish. 

It is easy to sit idly by and talk of what we might do if we 
had greater talents and larger opportunities. One man be¬ 
wails his lack of wealth and another his slender ability. 
Some dream of what they would do if they had a more 


88 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


congenial environment or a more powerful position. The 
slacker, whatever his opportunities or his limitations, is al¬ 
ways rich in excuses. He is never willing to acknowledge 
the cowardice or the laziness which prevents his making the 
effort which is always the price of any kind of achievement. 
The man who buries his one talent would treat ten in pre¬ 
cisely the same way. A weakling will not enter an open 
door of opportunity; a strong man can batter down an im¬ 
peding wall of adamant. Several years ago Ernest Thomp¬ 
son Seton, talking to an audience of young people, com¬ 
pressed a vast amount of wisdom into the aphoristic 
sentence: “ Do the best you can, where you are, with what 
you have.” That is just what David did. Success is always 
attained by the use that a man makes of what he has. 


PUZZLING ADVICE 


Be not righteous overmuch. 

Ecclesiastes VII, 16. 

These words have given some well-intentioned men and 
women considerable trouble. The casuist is likely to quib¬ 
ble as to whether or not it is possible to be too righteous. 
The super-pious, sub-intelligent individual will stand aghast 
at the idea of the Bible containing an exhortation against 
overrighteousness and will try to torture another meaning 
out of the words. Yet there is nothing confusing about 
them. They mean exactly what they say. The book of 
Ecclesiastes is not especially religious. It expresses a prac¬ 
tical earthly wisdom in language of exceptional literary 
charm. The author is basically a pessimist and the key sen¬ 
tence of the book is “ Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Ec¬ 
clesiastes contains a wealth of common-sense, unspiritual 
advice in regard to sane living. Among other things we 
read: “Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself 
overwise: why shouldst thou destroy thyself? Be not over¬ 
much wicked, neither be thou foolish; why shouldst thou 
die before thy time? ” The author believes that a man 
should seek the golden mean between righteousness and 
wickedness, between wisdom and foolishness. He thinks 
that it is possible for a person to walk too strictly the path 
of rectitude, just as he believes that one can be too wise. 

In these unpuritanic days “ Be not righteous overmuch ” 
is a text that applies to comparatively few lives. Not many 
of us are likely to err on the side of overstrictness. Probably 
89 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


9 0 

all of us have seen examples of it but they are more likely 
to belong to the past than the present. I recall that a year 
after graduation from college I was rebuked for committing 
the sin of reading on a Sunday afternoon such a secular 
writer as Thomas Carlyle, the tragedy of the occasion being 
that the rebuker did not know that the Chelsea prophet is 
a high white light of truth with a message of righteousness 
to each succeeding generation. The danger of being right¬ 
eous overmuch is that it so frequently degenerates into that 
quibbling which stresses the insignificant and forgets the 
weightier matters of the law. Being a Christian is some¬ 
thing more than the nourishing of a conglomeration of 
scruples. Jesus did not lay down a series of minute precepts. 
He taught the great underlying principles of morality. 
“ What he taught,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, “ was not 
a code of rules but a loving spirit; not truths but a spirit of 
truth; not views but a view.” The Pharisees were especially 
concerned about washing and tithing. Jesus said, “Love 
thy neighbor as thyself.” One of the great dangers arising 
from being righteous overmuch is that of becoming a futile 
formalist. 

Moreover, it is hard for the person who is fussy about the 
non-essentials to be consistent. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 
eccentric aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, once scolded a young 
preacher because she noticed him smiling in church. He 
defended himself by saying: “But I saw you smile, too, 
Miss Emerson.” The old lady replied: “ Well, possibly you 
did, but it was a sardonic smile.” 

Too great emphasis on any phase of truth is likely to 
cause a lack of ethical balance. Specializing in certain as¬ 
pects of righteousness is often responsible for a neglect of 
others. Illustrations here are rather dangerous, but they 


PUZZLING ADVICE 


91 

abound on all sides. The typical small-town Methodist can 
be depended upon to take an active interest in any move¬ 
ment against the liquor traffic. Sometimes, however, this 
is his only concern with social betterment. At the same time 
he cares nothing about such problems of social welfare as the 
eliminating of child labor, the decent care of defectives, 
the improving of housing conditions, the abolition of war, 
the securing of a living wage for labor and the more equita¬ 
ble distribution of wealth. It is well that he can be counted 
on in regard to one aspect of improving American life, but 
it is highly unfortunate that there are so many others which 
he ignores. Christianity is not a religion which specializes 
in one phase only of truth. Nothing which concerns hu¬ 
manity is alien to it. It stands not for specialization in 
righteousness but for a righteousness that is based on the 
broad, inclusive teachings of the Teacher of Nazareth. 


AN INADEQUATE RIGHTEOUSNESS 


For I say unto you, That except your righteousness 
shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and 
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the \ingdom 
of heaven. 

Matthew V, 20. 

Jesus was not a user of weasel words. His language was di¬ 
rect, clean-cut, and forthright. He left no doubt whatever 
in the minds of his hearers that he disapproved of the type 
of righteousness displayed by the scribes and Pharisees. 
Although these groups represented the strictest aspects of 
the Hebrew religion they received his absolute condemna¬ 
tion. To find the reason for this, one does not have to go 
farther than Matthew XXIII where Jesus excoriates the 
Pharisees in words so charged with fury that language al¬ 
most breaks down beneath their weight. He calls them 
“ whited sepulchers full of dead men’s bones,” “ blind 
guides,” “ hypocrites, serpents and generation of vipers.” 
He tells them that they pray to be seen of men, that they 
strain at gnats and swallow camels, and that they cleanse 
the outside of the cup and leave it filthy within. All of his 
denunciations can be summed up in the word formalism. 
Of this Jesus says: “ Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypo¬ 
crites; for ye pay tithes of mint, anise and cummin, and 
have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, 
mercy and faith.” His basic criticism is that they have 
substituted formalism for reality. 

In this the Pharisees are typical rather than exceptional. 

92 


AN INADEQUATE RIGHTEOUSNESS 93 

It is not at all difficult to find other examples of the same 
tendency. In Browning’s fascinating study of hatred “ The 
Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister ” we are allowed to look 
into the mind of a man who is criticizing another. As he 
analyzes his enemy he reveals himself to us. And it is hard 
to imagine a blacker heart than that in which the poet al¬ 
lows us to look. Yet the soliloquizer is very punctilious in 
regard to certain ecclesiastical forms. At the table in order 
to express his belief in the Trinity he drinks his watered 
orange pulp in three sips and lays his knife and fork cross- 
ways to suggest the crucifixion. When the bell rings for 
vespers he interrupts his curses to breathe a prayer. As soon 
as he has mumbled it he again begins to curse. If this par¬ 
ticular man had ever had any religion, it had by this time 
become a thing of the past. He still can salve what remains 
of his conscience by going through a few empty motions. 

The formalist always confuses essentials with non-essen¬ 
tials. He lacks a sense of values. To him the shell is more 
important than the kernel within. This is the reason that 
Jesus was not satisfied with the righteousness of the scribes 
and Pharisees. A veneer of piety will never take the place 
of a genuine religion. Imitation righteousness brings forth 
no fruit. Jesus never insulted his followers by making no 
demands upon them. He did not call them to walk an easy 
road. To follow him meant more than the fulfillment of a 
few worthless formalities. Therefore the righteousness of 
the scribes and Pharisees was not enough. 

There is nothing especially difficult about formalism. At 
a time when the fires of religious vitality burn low, when 
ethical passion disappears, when men no longer hunger and 
thirst for righteousness, they still tenaciously cling to the 
forms of a faith for which their fathers faced “ dungeon, fire 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


94 

and sword.” In fact, it is very often true that the less there 
is of reality in a man’s religion the more stress he lays upon 
its forms. The greater the neglect of the essentials the more 
the attention that is given to mint, anise and cummin. Pe¬ 
riods of formalism are times of moral slovenliness. The 
same is true of individuals. If we lose our grip upon the 
verities we pathetically cherish some of the unimportant ex¬ 
ternals which we once associated with them. By doing this 
we can delude ourselves into thinking that we still have that 
which we have lost. An overvaluing of non-essentials is 
invariably a sign of spiritual retrogression. The history of 
the Christian church is for the most part a story of contro¬ 
versies over matters of little or no importance. Quibbling 
never has been conducive to the attainment of the higher 
reaches of spirituality. In using the word righteousness 
Jesus was emphasizing the irrefragible truth that there is a 
close relation between religion and conduct. The only 
genuine righteousness is that which expresses itself in right 


THE SCHOOL OF SOLITUDE 


Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in- 
law, the priest of Midian: and he led his flock to the 
backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of 
God even to Horeb. 

Exodus III, i. 

After the court of Egypt the desert of Midian must have 
now and then seemed a lonely place to Moses. It is easy to 
think of him sitting in the midst of flocks, especially at that 
twilight hour when the soul builds bridges from the land 
of dreams to the land of earth, thinking of the active, color¬ 
ful, glamorous past in contrast with the monotony of the 
day after day in the wilderness. But the discipline of the 
desert was a necessary element in the preparation of Moses 
for the performance of the stupendous tasks which were 
before him. 

De Quincey says, “ So much solitude, so much power.” 
This is probably putting it too strong. But a life that is not 
checkered with solitude cannot but be shallow, empty. It 
was Goethe who said: “ A talent is developed in solitude 
but a character in the stream of the world.” No one would 
deny that the struggles and temptations of life in the great 
arena of humanity build and test the character. It would 
be hard, however, to imagine a really great soul being grown 
in a life so crowded with human associations that there 
would be no time for quiet thinking, no chance for brood¬ 
ing on the unfathomable mysteries which are over and 
around us. In spite of the thousands of books written our 
95 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


96 

knowledge of Shakespeare the man is decidedly meager. 
Yet it can be said with all possible assurance that there were 
periods in his life when he lived apart from the turmoil of 
the crowd. A man too scatterbrained and superficial to en¬ 
dure his own society would never have produced a Hamlet 
or Macbeth. If he had never in solitude faced the unseen 
realities it would have been impossible for him to have 
plumbed the well-nigh fathomless depths of reality. 

Dante was a man of his own generation. His Divine 
Comedy enshrines the far-away Middle Ages in the inef¬ 
fable beauty of never-dying verse. Interpreter of his own 
day as he was, no student of Dante needs to be told that 
he trod many a day the path of solitude. Not only did he 
know the solitariness of the hours when he was without hu¬ 
man contacts, but also that bitterest of all kinds of loneliness, 
the loneliness of him who is alone in the midst of the many. 
A thronging city street may give one more of a sense of 
being alone than the depth of the wilderness. There is a 
sense in which every life is separated from every other life. 
Matthew Arnold brings out the thought in these words: 

Yes; in the sea of life enisl’d 
With echoing straits between us thrown. 

Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 

We mortal millions live alone. 

No matter how much we may strive to eliminate this gulf, it 
can never be completely bridged. From the very nature of 
life we must live alone. 

One of the pathetic aspects of human existence is the 
struggle of many to avoid solitude. Anyone who has ob¬ 
served school or college life, as either a student or teacher, 
has come into contact with the individual who always wants 


THE SCHOOL OF SOLITUDE 


97 

to study with a group. All of us know men and women 
who seem afraid of solitude, who are always looking for 
some crowd to which they can attach themselves. This 
fear of being alone is a spiritual infirmity which should be 
resisted by one having tendencies in that direction. No man 
ever became either a scholar or a saint in the midst of the 
crowd. The best thinking is never done by one surrounded 
by the chatter and hubbub of milling humanity. Only 
when we are by ourselves can we see things in their real 
perspective. Friedrich Paulsen uttered the pithy aphorism 
that “ the man who rings the firebell cannot walk in the 
procession.” Life’s watchtower is never a crowded place, 
but it is the only point of vantage from which the world 
can be seen as it really is. Wordsworth speaks of 

that inward eye 
which is the bliss of solitude. 

The mightiest truths of the universe are those which are 
seen with the “ inward eye.” It was in the silence of the 
Tekoan hills that Amos became a prophet of the in¬ 
visible realities. It was the loneliness of the long night 
watches that made David a poet and Moses a seer. In a 
more crowded world, where we all seem closer together, we 
need to remember the words of the poet-prophet of ancient 
days, “ Be still and know that I am God.” 


THE GOSPEL OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT 


Ta\e heed unto thyself. 

I Timothy IV, 16 . 

Although the emphasis upon the social aspects of the 
Christian religion which has characterized the last quarter 
of a century is not to be minimized, each individual owes 
certain obligations to himself. There is a danger of our 
being so busy cultivating our neighbors’ fields that we shall 
allow our own to grow up with weeds. Self-development 
is a basic Christian duty. Nothing will take the place of 
strength of character and personality. Everything that we 
say and do is the outgrowth of what we are. All men are 
not of equal value to society. One personality is a posi¬ 
tive force for good, another counts little or nothing either 
way. And still another is an influence baneful and noxious. 
Great minds and great hearts are society’s most valuable 
assets. Petty souls are its greatest liability. 

No extraneous gifts that we can make to humanity can 
be worth as much as our own personality. Phillips Brooks 
was a great preacher because he was primarily a great man. 
His sermons are of sufficient value to stand the test of time, 
and they are good reading today. Nevertheless their win¬ 
someness and power are due to the fact that Phillips Brooks 
preached them, that they came from his mind and heart. 
Everything that a man says or does is the lengthened shadow 
of his own soul. His influence is determined by the quality 
of his personality. John Milton said: “There is nothing 
93 


THE GOSPEL OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT 99 

that makes men rich and strong but that which they carry 
inside of them. Wealth is of the heart, not of the hand.” 

An overambitious young man asked an older and wiser 
one for advice. Among other things he said, “ Sometimes 
I think that I don’t know how to sell myself.” The other 
replied, “ Are you sure that you have anything to sell ? ” 
That type of altruism which sends a youth out into the 
world to “ do good ” before he possesses the qualities of 
brain and heart which will enable him to be of real service 
to humanity has been an impediment to the advancement of 
God’s kingdom. A young man with two years more of 
study before the completion of his college course said to 
President Finney of Oberlin: “I can’t wait any longer. I 
feel that instead of wasting my time in college I should 
be out in the world saving souls.” Dr. Finney retorted: 
“ Young man, if God had wanted you to be saving souls this 
year he would have made you two years earlier.” One of 
the saddest sights in the whole world is that of someone 
with the noblest ideals and the most unselfish intentions la¬ 
boring for human betterment and doing more harm than 
good because he has developed a personality that undoes all 
that he tries to accomplish. 

If our contribution to society is the sum of what we are, 
then what we make of ourselves determines our degree of 
usefulness. Every man is his own ancestor. Our thoughts, 
our words and our actions today are the factors which de¬ 
cide what we shall be tomorrow. Paul’s exhortation to 
Timothy, “ Take heed unto thyself,” was not selfish advice. 
Character is not a plant that grows without cultivation. 
Personality never falls as doth the gentle rain from heaven. 
Dr. Howard Bement says that equipment consists of “ stam¬ 
ina, scholarship and sympathy.” None of these charac- 


100 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


teristics springs up overnight like some miraculous flower. 
Neither do the other qualities which make for breadth of 
soul and power of personality. A reputation is not some¬ 
thing that is handed to a person. It must be won. This is 
even more true of character. 

An obsequious follower never will become a real leader. 
A slavish imitator of others, afraid to think a thought of his 
own or utter an opinion with even a semblance of original¬ 
ity, will never have power of personality. Edmund Vance 
Cooke pungently expresses deep wisdom in these original 
lines : 

Are you You? 

Are you a trailer or are you a trolley ? 

Are you tagged to a leader through wisdom and folly ? 

Are you Somebody Else, or You? 

Do you vote by the symbol and swallow it straight ? 

Do you pray by the book, do you pay by the rate, 

Do you tie your cravat by the calendar’s date? 

Do you follow a cue ? 

Are you a writer or that which is worded ? 

Are you a shepherd, or one of the herded ? 

Which are you — a What or a Who ? 

It sounds very well to call yourself “ one of the flock,” 

But a sheep is a sheep after all. At the block 

You are nothing but mutton, or possibly stock; 

Would you flavor a stew? 

Are you a being and boss of your soul, 

Or are you a mummy to carry a scroll, 

Are you Somebody Else or You? 


THE GOSPEL OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT 


101 


When you finally pass to the heavenly wicket, 

Where Peter the Scrutinous stands at his picket, 

Are you going to give a blank for a ticket? 

Do you think it will do ? 

Standing like a rock for one’s convictions eventually builds 
a character. Thinking for oneself is an essential factor in 
the development of a personality. But the question of self¬ 
development is as large as life itself. Jesus said, “ I am 
come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly.” 
If we live abundantly, if we avail ourselves of the illimitable 
riches of Jesus Christ to transform our littleness to full-orbed 
greatness, we shall become what we should be. Then God 
will give us “ not the spirit of fear but of power and of love 
and of sound mind.” 


FEARING THE HEIGHTS 


They shall be afraid of that which is high. 

Ecclesiastes XII, 5. 

These words are from the famous description of old age. 
Moffatt expressively translates the passage, “ Old age fears 
a height and even a walk has its terrors.” The excessive 
cautiousness which the ancient poet declared to be one of 
the marks of decrepitude is not always a characteristic of ad¬ 
vancing years. There are old men who are not afraid of 
the arduous task. At eighty-five Caleb said to Joshua: 
“ Give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that 
day; for thou heardst in that day how the Anakims were 
there, and that the cities were great and fenced; if so be the 
Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them 
out.” Side by side with this we can find examples of young 
men characterized by a hard-boiled matter-of-factness who 
have no spirit of adventure but hug the shores of life. It is 
said that man is as old as his arteries. This is only half true. 
A man who has lost the spirit of idealism is old even if he 
has been in this world but twenty years. 

“ They shall be afraid of that which is high ” is a poetic 
expression of the well-worn maxim, “ safety first.” It is an 
exemplification of what Emerson refers to as “ a base pru¬ 
dence which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no 
other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye 
and ear.” The old-young man is afraid of ideals and ideas. 
If someone speaks to him concerning international affairs 
he answers, “ I believe in keeping out of that mess.” When 


102 


FEARING THE HEIGHTS 


103 

a change in our tariff policy is mentioned he quotes some of 
the arguments of his grandfather about “ protecting our in¬ 
fant industries from the pauper labor of Europe.” He looks 
upon world peace as the wildest of chimeras. If he goes to 
college he is woefully fearful lest some theoretical professor 
mislead him into studying such ethereal and “ worthless ” 
subjects as literature or philosophy. He wants a “ good 
practical ” and easy course in business administration, some¬ 
thing which will teach him how to make a “ good killing ” 
in Wall Street. The object of life to this Babbitt is to get all 
that he can and to keep all that he can. He is a cautiously 
aggressrve defender of the status quo. In his bright lexicon 
of youth anybody with a scintilla of liberalism or an idea of 
any later vintage than that of the eighteen-nineties is a 
“ communist.” 

An unmistakable sign of spiritual age is a general atti¬ 
tude of suspicion and cynical indifference. An inability to 
become enthusiastic about anybody or anything evidences a 
hardening of the spiritual arteries. To believe in men and 
in causes, to have the power enthusiastically to blaze new 
trails and catch the gleam of undiscovered territory in the 
realm of thought indicates that the fires of youthful venture 
are still burning in the heart. 

The man who has not ceased to grow and to learn is a 
perennial pioneer. And the spirit of the pioneer is always 
the spirit of youth. Not for it is “ the cushion and the slip¬ 
per, the peaceful and the studious.” It is the world of “ con¬ 
quering, holding, daring as we go through the unknown 
ways.” The pioneer is not satisfied with meek conformity, 
smug contentedness, stupid respectability and the safety of 
the crowd. Just as those men in the covered wagons crossed 
the broad prairies and the pathless deserts and discovered 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


IO4 

that which lay hidden behind the ranges, the spiritual pio¬ 
neer must have the power of venture. He must have the 
courage to face untried tasks and the vision of new promised 
lands. 

Abraham was a pioneer. At the call of God he went out 
into a far country not knowing whither he went. Wycliffe, 
Savonarola, Knox, Huss and Wesley were not afraid of 
ideals. They believed in the heavenly vision and followed 
it. Paul was the pioneer missionary. He was a battler 
against things as they were and for what they should be. 
The men who in the little Mayflower crossed the wintry sea 
were not afraid to venture. 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, 
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past’s; 
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath 
made us free, 

Hoarding it in moldy parchments while our tender spirits 
flee 

The rude grasp of that great impulse which drove them 
across the sea. 

The explorer, the prophet and the crusader are first-line- 
trench fighters for the betterment of an imperfect world. 
There are still evils to be exterminated, wrongs to be righted 
and ideals to be enthroned. The timorous fearer of that 
which is high will hide among the many, but the pioneer 
soul will “ blaze the path where highway never ran.” 


TWILIGHT TREMBLINGS 


The twilight that I love hath been turned to shud¬ 
dering . ( Moffatt .) 

Isaiah XXI, 4. 

The glare-wearied men and women of Babylon loved the 
twilight because it meant a surcease from the fierce heat of 
the oriental sun. Then they could seek the balconies and 
housetops and enjoy the coolness of the evening breezes. 
But there came a time when instead of looking forward to 
the quietness and refreshment of the evening hours they 
dreaded their approach. For it was then that their hostile 
Elamite and Medean neighbors were most likely to attack 
them. The hour of the day which they had once enjoyed 
the most became the time of which they thought with shud¬ 
dering. In the twilight enemies availed themselves of the 
blur of the gathering darkness to creep unseen upon them. 

We are now living in an age of twilight. The old order 
has departed. The new era is not yet here. It has long been 
the fashion of public speakers to refer to their own genera¬ 
tion as a day of transition. In saying this they have mostly 
uttered words of truth. Any period is a time of change. 
The wheels of life never cease to move. But in these years 
since that fateful August of 1914 to an unusual degree we 
have been 

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 

The other powerless to be born. 

The map of the world has been so metamorphosed that our 
atlases have become worthless. Long entrenched systems of 


106 TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 

thought have been thrown into the discard. As govern¬ 
ments grapple apparently in vain with an economic break¬ 
down, colossal in its proportions and continuing year after 
year, serious-minded thinkers are prophesying that we are 
standing on the verge of a new industrial order. Many old 
ideas have been rejected. And just as many new ones have 
proved false or futile. Our fathers were often ultra-certain 
as to what constituted right and wrong. We frankly admit 
that we do not know. We belong to the group of 

Those who with half-open eyes 

Tread the border-land dim 

Twixt vice and virtue. 

A blurred vision always means ethical laxity and a lack of a 
sense of personal responsibility. Intolerance is not one of 
our faults. Never was there a more tolerant generation. 
We tolerate everything because we have no especially defi¬ 
nite convictions about anything. But there are those who 
have inherited the old-time Puritan passion for righteous¬ 
ness, who have a genuine abhorrence of that which is evil 
and a deeply rooted desire to cleave to that which is good, 
who are confused and groping. 

The twilight, however, is not the hour of midnight dark¬ 
ness. Jesus said, “ I am the light of the world.” And that 
light shines on as the generations come and go. To say 
that in the teachings of Jesus we find light in the midst of 
twilight is not simply repeating a well-worn pulpit platitude. 
The best antidote to intellectual confusion is to study ele¬ 
mental truths of life. The great Teacher of Nazareth dealt 
not with philosophical abstractions but with the concrete 
problems of real life. He who regulates his own life in ac¬ 
cord with these teachings is not going to become hopelessly 


TWILIGHT TREMBLINGS 


107 

lost. The best way to acquire more light is to live up to that 
which we have. There are two kinds of twilight, that of 
the evening which fades into darkness and that of the morn¬ 
ing which brightens into day. If we honestly and persist¬ 
ently seek light and follow it, the hour will come when the 
twilight of trembling will be followed by the joy which 
cometh in the morning. 


LANGUAGE AND MORALS 


Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil . 

Isaiah V, 20. 

Thomas Carlyle, in speaking of the language of his father, 
James Carlyle, master mason of Ecclefechan, uttered the fol¬ 
lowing unforgettable sentences: “ None of us will ever for¬ 
get that bold glowing style of his, flowing free from his 
untutored soul, full of metaphors (though he knew not 
what a metaphor was). Nothing did I ever hear him un¬ 
dertake to render visible which did not become almost ocu¬ 
larly so. . . . Never shall we again hear such speech as that 
was. The whole district knew of it and laughed joyfully 
over it, not knowing otherwise how to express the feeling it 
gave them; emphatic I have heard him beyond all men. In 
anger he had no need of oaths, his words were like sharp 
arrows that smote into the very heart.” And the closer we 
come into contact with the personality of James Carlyle the 
more clearly we see that his speech was its inevitable expres¬ 
sion. This is always the case. Our words are the expression 
of what we are. 

There is a close relation between a man’s language and 
his morals. It is true that we judge individuals by their 
fruits rather than by their verbal professions. But there can 
be no genuinely honest speaking without honest thinking. 
And honesty in thought is the result of integrity of soul. 
Religion is not a matter of world-detached mysticism. If it 
exists at all in a life it produces that genuineness of charac¬ 
ter which reflects itself in straightforward, sincere speech. 

108 


LANGUAGE AND MORALS 


IO9 

Years ago there was a minister who had the bad habit of 
exaggeration. His superior officer in the ecclesiastical or¬ 
ganization of which he was a member ordered him to apolo¬ 
gize in public. This he did with the utmost contrition, 
telling his brethren that he was conscious of this sin in his 
life and that he had shed “ barrels of tears ” about it. This 
might have been simply a bad verbal habit. But our habits 
of speech, like all other habits, are indexes of the state of our 
souls. One of America’s most distinguished preachers 
spent a Sunday at an ancient seat of learning, preaching in 
the chapel on Sunday morning. A student wrote home: 
“We had a guy from New York to preach to us today. Gee, 
but he was rotten.” This sentence is in itself rather com¬ 
plete evidence as to the state of both the mentality and the 
spirituality of its writer. 

The fine art of discrimination is one of the major virtues 
of life. The man who fails to tell the truth eventually loses 
the power to see the truth. To call black white is no more 
commendable than to call white black. I once heard a man 
on the witness stand when pressed very hard in a cross 
examination, after pausing for a moment and bracing him¬ 
self, say, “ I lied.” I could not help feeling that there was 
some hope for one who did not attempt to shilly-shally and 
use evasive terms. When a thief speaks of his stealing as an 
“ irregularity,” there is little hope for him. Evasiveness in 
terminology means a failure to face ugly facts in an honest 
way. 

In regard to ethical matters our fathers were as a rule 
overconfident. For them there was no neutral strip between 
right and wrong. They had no hesitancy about cataloguing 
vices and virtues. Our generation is by no means so certain. 
We look at the problems of life from more angles and as a 


no 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


result are likely to become badly confused. Under such cir¬ 
cumstances it is easy to become obsessed by a silly maudlin- 
ism which causes us to become so super-tolerant that we 
palliate all kinds of wrongdoing. Such a philosophy of life 
naturally causes one to call evil good. The result is intel¬ 
lectual confusion and ethical deterioration. Honesty in 
speech is one of the old-fashioned virtues which through the 
generations have been the pillars of Christian civilization. 


UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE 


But he himself went a day's journey into the wil¬ 
derness, and came and sat down under a juniper 
tree . 

I Kings XIX, 4. 

Not many hours before Elijah had defied all of the cohorts 
of Baal including King Ahab and his dominating, ruthless 
queen, Jezebel. Now he cowers under a juniper tree pray¬ 
ing that he might die and crying: “ It is enough; O Lord, 
take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.” 

There are several explanations of this descent of the daunt¬ 
less prophet into the valley of melancholy. The contest with 
the priests of Baal had been a time of tensity, of unlimited 
expenditure of nerve force. After any such experience a 
reaction is inevitable. Many a great moral tragedy has been 
the result of the nervous exhaustion following the burning 
up of vitality in an hour of stress. Closely akin to this re¬ 
action was the plain fact that Elijah was tired. Even if he 
had not had almost superhuman demands made upon body 
and mind and heart by the dramatic events upon Mount 
Carmel, the running of a day’s journey would have made 
any man an easy subject for an attack of blues. Then, too, 
very often the sensitive, finely grained, spiritually minded 
person is so constituted that he is a fit subject for melan¬ 
choly. The idealist who knows how things should be is 
likely to be discouraged with them as they are. Clear in¬ 
sight into human nature is not conducive to optimism. 
hi 


112 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


More than one individual with keen insight into human 
motives has been inclined to say with Sam Jones: “ The 
more I see of human nature, the better I like my dog.” 

In sinking down into the quicksands of despondency 
Elijah was simply demonstrating that he was not a super¬ 
man but a faltering, erring, wavering human being. To 
excoriate him for his discouragement is to show a lack of 
ordinary brotherly sympathy. But the hopeless prophet was 
mistaken. He had come to the conclusion that he was the 
only righteous man in the kingdom. “ I only am left.” Of 
course, he was wrong in believing this. God’s servants 
never have to stand entirely alone. And worse than this, 
in spite of his victory of the day before, he felt that God 
had deserted him. He was not the last man to be seized 
with a panic of doubt in regard to the ultimate victory of 
right. Many a storm-beaten saint with a heart torn by pangs 
of loneliness has felt that no one else cared whether the 
cause for which he poured his heart’s blood lost or won. 
The soul groping in darkness does not always have a sense 
of the presence of the Great Companion. The discouraged 
battler for right needs to quote every now and then Lowell’s 
ringing words: 

Careless seems the great Avenger: history’s pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and 
the Word; 

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the 
throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim un¬ 
known, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his 
own. 


UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE 113 

The story is told that every Sunday of the year Dr. James 
Stalker was accustomed to give thanks for the weather. He 
expressed, without exception, his gratitude for the soft 
breezes of the springtide, the calm, mild days of autumn, 
the beneficent warmth of the summer and the invigorating 
winds of winter. One Sunday the weather was indescriba¬ 
bly bad. It seemed as though nothing could be said in its 
favor. Dr. Stalker’s congregation wondered how he would 
meet the situation, but he nobly rose to the occasion by say¬ 
ing : “ Lord, we thank thee that it is not always as bad as it 
is today.” Elijah’s world, even with Ahab and Jezebel on 
the throne, was not as bad as he thought it was. To him 
who sits beneath the juniper tree the skies always look 
somewhat darker than they really are, and the God who is 
near at hand even there seems to be off in the dim distance. 
Much has happened in recent years to send us to the slough 
of despond, but “ it is not always as bad as it is today.” 
After the juniper tree comes the angelic visitor, the still, 
small voice of hope and the call to face new tasks and press 
on to new achievements. 


INVESTMENTS 


He that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into 
a bag with holes. 

Haggai I, 6 . 

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where 
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where 
thieves do not brea\ through nor steal. 

Matthew VI, 20. 

There was a run on a bank. The depositors were in line, 
each waiting to demand his money. Just as an old colored 
man stood before the window it went down with a bang. 
He looked so puzzled that a bystander explained to him 
that the bank had closed. Still he did not understand and 
he was asked if he never heard of a bank “ busting.” His 
reply was, “ Sho boss, I has. But I never had one to bust 
right in my face befo’.” During the past few years a good 
many of us have had financial institutions “ bust right in 
our faces.” Listen to a group of business men talk. More 
often than not their conversation has to do with assets 
depleted to a fraction of their former value or completely 
swept away. There are hundreds of thousands of Ameri¬ 
cans who felt sure that they had made an adequate pro¬ 
vision for old age only to wake up some bitter morning to 
find themselves in hopeless poverty. It has too frequently 
proved true that he who earns a wage puts it into a bag with 
holes. 

Ten years ago when we were all certain that the value of 
everything was bound to increase, when to speculate for a 


INVESTMENTS 


“5 

rise in prices was the favorite pastime for people in all 
walks of life, the investment of money seemed a very simple 
problem. But in this economic debacle, when businesses 
that appeared to stand as firm as a rock have crumbled into 
nothingness, when economic leaders whose names were 
once pronounced with reverence have proved themselves 
unmitigated scoundrels, confidence in the safety of invest¬ 
ments is by no means at a high peak. For most of us, how¬ 
ever, the problem of the disposition of superfluous funds is de¬ 
cidedly academic. A much more practical question is, how 
are we going to make income meet outgo? And the real 
tragedy is the fact that in a world of bursting granaries and 
multifarious activities millions can find no work to do 
wherewith to earn the most meager of livelihoods. We 
must, however, not fail to learn the lessons which the eco¬ 
nomic debacle has to teach us. Some of the fortunes which 
have been swept away were not only badly invested but 
they were not being used for the benefit of mankind. 
Daniel Drew was hardly an exponent of high principle in 
business. Nevertheless, he has to his credit a sentence which 
should have wider currency. After his failure some one 
said to him: “ Mr. Drew, you gave too much money away.” 
His reply was: “ No, I didn’t. What I gave I have. What 
I kept is gone.” Many a good cause today is languishing 
which could have been helped five years ago by money 
which instead was put into a bag with holes. If some of 
the energy and ability which has been expended in an accu¬ 
mulation which proved but temporary had been utilized in 
helping movements for human betterment, the result would 
have been lasting. There are those who today are standing 
by the wreck of that which was accumulated by a life¬ 
time of selfishness, stinginess and ruthlessness. The eco- 


ii 6 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


nomic history of the United States is evidence that the only 
investments which are absolutely secure are those which are 
made where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. 

Devotion to high principle is the making of an invest¬ 
ment that is invulnerable. Unselfish living is laying up 
treasures which no thief can steal. The person who inspires, 
strengthens and aids struggling youth is doing a work 
where the results are certain. Silas Marner was robbed of 
his gold, but no one could steal from him the love that 
blossomed in his heart when a little child came toddling to 
his door and into his life. No good deed is ever done in 
vain. The essential values of life are not the things which 
we can see with the eye or touch with the hand. The intan¬ 
gibles are real. Ideals remain when much that seemed to 
stand with adamantine firmness is swept away. Whether 
we have money or not, every day we are making invest¬ 
ments. We have time, talents and personality. What are 
we doing with them ? Are we flippantly wasting them or 
are we making investments that count ? 


PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT 


We spend our years as a tale that is told. 

Psalm XC, 9. 

As we turn the pages of the world’s literature, more than 
once do we come across sad, impressive words permeated 
with a sense of the brevity of man’s days upon earth. An 
old Anglo-Saxon writer compares life to a little bird that 
flies in through a window, flutters around for a few brief 
moments, and then wings its way out. Homer makes one 
of his characters say: “ Even as are the generations of leaves, 
such are those likewise of men; the leaves that be the wind 
scattereth on the earth, and the forest buddeth and putteth 
forth more again, when the season of spring is at hand; so 
of the generations of men; one putteth forth and another 
ceaseth.” But as often as we read such words, they are to 
most of us little more than rhetoric until we have lived 
long enough to witness for ourselves the drama of the pass¬ 
ing generations. When we see those whom we knew as 
little children bearing the burdens of manhood and woman¬ 
hood, when others of whom we are prone to think as vigor¬ 
ous men and women in middle life grow bent and gray, 
when we can walk through the “ God’s Acre ” upon the 
hillside and carved upon the granite read many a well- 
known and well-beloved name, then we understand what 
our fathers meant when they sang: 

Our days are as the grass 

Or like the morning flower. 


Il8 TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 

Not many months ago I journeyed across my home 
county in southeastern Pennsylvania, a land beautiful and 
well beloved. There stood the old ivy-mantled homesteads 
and the big stone barns looking not very different from 
what they did thirty-five years ago. The hills wore again 
the many-tinted glory of the autumn; the brown fields 
joined each to each as in the days gone by. The broad road 
still wound over the hill and through the valley, but those 
who once traveled it are in this world to be seen no more. 
Another generation treads the paths worn by the feet of 
their fathers. From the great deep we come, to the great 
deep we go. Man’s days are as the shadow which flees 
across the sunny hill, as the flower which blossoms and 
fades. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle pass the years. We 
are pilgrims of the night. 

Joseph Cook put it all in one short sentence: “ Striving 
twenties; thriving thirties; fiery forties; faithful fifties; sober 
sixties; solemn seventies; aching eighties; the sod; God! ” 
But the swift passing of the years does not mean that all is 
vanity. Rather is it a call to work while it is yet day. It is 
recorded of one of the princes of France that his principal 
occupation was killing weasels in barns. There are plenty 
of weasel-killers in the world. It is easy to develop the habit 
of wasting hour after hour in pitiable futilities. A shorter 
working day means more leisure. But an abundance of 
leisure is for some a doubtful blessing and for others an 
absolute curse. There are women in America today with 
ample time to make their lives count in the higher life of 
their communities who have made the shuffling of cards 
the major occupation of life. A group of young soldiers 
were encamped in a certain locality. Most of them spent 
their time in inane loafing. One young man, however, 


PILGRIMS OF THE NIGHT 


Il 9 

made a map of the surrounding territory, a map which was 
of inestimable service to him and the army which he com¬ 
manded thirty years later. 

In a world of the petty done and the undone vast “ life 
piled on life were all too little.” All around are fields ripe 
for the harvest, and the laborers are indeed few. As one 
grows older the years pass much more quickly. Many a 
man has found to his surprise and remorse that the evening 
has come and he has accomplished nothing. John Ruskin 
once said: “ The noblest prayer with which one can begin 
a day is that its moments may be spent aright.” 

Forenoon, and afternoon and night; — Forenoon, 
And afternoon, and night; Forenoon, and — what? 

The empty song repeats itself. No more? 

Yea, that is life; make this forenoon sublime, 

This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, 

And time is conquered, and thy crown is won. 


THE HIGHER LAW OF COMPENSATION 


God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be 
tempted above that ye are able; but will with the 
temptation also ma\e a way of escape that ye may 
be able to bear it. 

I Corinthians X, 13. 

This truth is a part of one of the great fundamental laws 
of life. Emerson called it the law of compensation and 
made it the subject of one of his most illuminating essays. 
The basic idea of the law of compensation is that for every 
advantage there is a disadvantage and for every weakness 
a strength. As Emerson expresses it, “ Every sweet has its 
sour; every evil its good.” And following the same line of 
reasoning we can rest assured that for every temptation 
there is given us a compensating strength. During the 
Hundred Years War between England and France one of 
the armies of Edward III which was under the command 
of his son, Edward, the Black Prince, was sorely beset by 
the French. The prince sent to his father for help, but none 
came. Thereupon he sent another messenger to his father, 
but with the same result. Upon his imploring help a third 
time his father sent him this message: “ You tell my son, the 
Black Prince, that I am too good a general not to know 
when he needs help and too kind a father not to send it 
when he needs it.” This is a statement of the higher law of 
compensation. God knows when we need help and strength 
in the hour of temptation, and he will not leave us defense¬ 
less. As our day is, so shall our strength be. 


120 


THE HIGHER LAW OF COMPENSATION 


121 


Victory can never be won by soldiers obsessed by the idea 
of the inevitability of defeat. The idea so deeply entrenched 
and so widely circulated among certain groups of ultra¬ 
modern thinkers, that the mere presence of a temptation is 
sufficient ground for yielding, is false and cowardly. It 
causes an atrophy of courage and breeds moral degradation. 
We cannot too frequently give expression to the truth that 
right need never go down to ultimate defeat because a 
strength that is infinite supplements the frailties of human¬ 
ity. If life were nothing more than gently sailing heaven¬ 
ward upon a quiet sea, man would be a weak, namby- 
pamby sort of creature. 

The head-hunters of the South Seas, the far-famed wild 
men of Borneo, believed that if they killed an enemy all of 
his strength and bravery would become the possession of 
his slayer. The stronger and more potent the enemy, the 
more power would come to the one who conquered him. 
Browning says: 

Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
And master and make crouch beneath his feet 
And so be pedestaled in triumph? 

Every temptation conquered can be a steppingstone to a 
higher life. The sting that makes earth’s smoothness rough 
may be a potent factor in the development of those qualities 
which make for stalwart Christian manhood and woman¬ 
hood. There is no need of the right-spirited, brave-souled 
human being going down in the fight. The whole armor 
of God is available to him. Whether we win the crown of 
spiritual victory or walk the ignominious path of moral de¬ 
feat depends upon our own willingness to fight the good 
fight of faith. 


FACING SODOM 


And Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom . 

Genesis XIII, 12. 

And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. 

Genesis XIX, 1. 

Abraham and his nephew, Lot, had together left their native 
hills and with their households and possessions had been 
companions through years of wanderings. As long as they 
were poor there was no trouble, but when their herds and 
flocks grew large, discord broke out between the herdsmen 
of the two men. Consequently, it seemed wise to divide the 
land. The magnanimous Abraham gave Lot his choice. 
Lot took advantage of the generosity of his uncle by select¬ 
ing the well-watered plain of Jordan, which was “ even as 
the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou 
comest unto Zoar.” 

There was, however, another aspect of the situation which 
Lot failed to take into consideration. The fertile soil of the 
Jordan valley made him forget the proximity of the city of 
Sodom, of whose inhabitants we are told: “ But the men of 
Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceed¬ 
ingly.” When Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom, he faced 
in the wrong direction. The outcome of any life is a 
matter of the direction in which it faces. Three men are on 
a road leading up a hill. One man is near the top, another 
about halfway up, and the third at the bottom. Which one 
is going to get to the top first? To some the answer might 
122 


FACING SODOM 


123 

appear so obvious as to make the question appear futile. 
But not all of the implications of the query are upon the 
surface. The man at the top of the hill is facing the bottom 
and is going in that direction. The second man is standing 
sideways looking out over the distant landscape, but the 
man at the bottom is facing the top and marching steadily 
in that direction. In estimating the possibilities of a life the 
matter of the direction which it faces at any given time is 
of outstanding moment. Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom 
and soon he is living in Sodom. This is just as we might 
expect it to be. Direction determines destination. 

The closing chapter in the story of Lot and his family is 
an unspeakable moral tragedy. It began, however, not upon 
the mountain of Zoar but upon the plains which looked 
toward Sodom. His choice was entirely actuated by the 
desire to add to his possessions. He apparently did not give 
the slightest thought to the environment into which he was 
taking his children. Yet at the outset it is doubtful if Lot 
would have moved into the city of Sodom itself. His going 
into its neighborhood was the first step in the wrong direc¬ 
tion. Many a man who eventually marches freely along on 
the wrong road would never have deliberately decided upon 
such a course. It is, according to his way of thinking, a 
rather minor matter to take one step from the path of right. 
The first step makes it easy to take the second, and the third 
is only one more than the second. 

An individual is asked to make a slight concession in re¬ 
gard to a matter of principle. In his natural desire to be 
complaisant he can readily make himself believe that such a 
deviation is not an especially serious matter. He can say to 
himself: “ One must not be too puritanic these days. A 
person must do what everybody else does.” Sometimes the 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


I24 

so-called minor problem of conduct has ramifications which 
make it far-reaching in its influence upon the man or 
woman direcdy involved and upon society in general. 
Many a time, saying Yes when No should have been the 
answer has changed the course of a life. Going up a street 
instead of down, or down instead of up, may mean a right¬ 
about-face changing the destiny of a human being. One 
departure from a deeply entrenched standard of living can 
be the selling of one’s soul to the prince of the power of 
darkness. 

Man cannot stand still morally. He is either improving 
or retrograding. Each one of us is either better or worse 
than we were this time a year ago. We are going forward 
or backward. In this day of considerable uncertainty, when 
life is jolting many of us out of our accustomed ruts, it be¬ 
hooves us to watch carefully the signposts along the path. 
Have we pitched our tents toward Sodom or are we still 
facing the right goal ? 


LIVING PEACEABLY 


If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peace¬ 
ably with all men. 

Romans XII, 18. 

Paul was a teacher of practical Christian ethics. Those to 
whom he wrote the letters which comprise such an impor¬ 
tant part of our New Testament literature needed such in¬ 
structions. Nobody seemed to know exactly what was ex¬ 
pected of a Christian. One faction contended that a person 
could not follow Christ without practically becoming a Jew 
and adhering to all the requirements of the Old Testament 
ritual. In addition, the early Christians were surrounded 
by all of the confusion and vice of a degenerate pagan world. 
Under such circumstances it was hard for them to know 
just what was right. It is altogether possible that Paul’s 
involved and learned theology was beyond some of those to 
whom his letters were addressed. But his practical teach¬ 
ings in regard to the problems of everyday life were com¬ 
prehensible to all. His advice to the Romans about peace¬ 
able living presents no textual difficulties. The Christians 
of Rome needed it, and the modern world needs it. In¬ 
ability to live peaceably is in most instances an indication of 
a spiritual lack. 

General Braxton Bragg of the Confederate army was 
famed for his proficiency in quarreling. One time while he 
was commander of a division he was appointed to act as 
quartermaster. The next day, as head of the division, he 
wrote a letter to himself as quartermaster requesting cer- 
125 


126 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


tain supplies. Then Bragg in the capacity of quartermaster 
wrote to Bragg the commander and refused his request. 
Thereupon Commander Bragg replied in a letter stating his 
objections to the decision of the quartermaster and renew¬ 
ing his request. This correspondence continued for several 
days until Bragg presented the matter to the general, who 
commented as follows: “ Bragg, you have quarreled with 
everybody else in the army and now you are quarreling 
with yourself.” 

Contentiousness is invariably an impediment to useful¬ 
ness. All of us can think of men, in some instances of more 
than ordinary talents, who are failures on account of their 
inability to live peaceably with others. They go from posi¬ 
tion to position, beginning with vaunted flourishes and 
ending disgruntled and disappointed. The qualities which 
cause strife are even worse than its results. They are jeal¬ 
ousy, pride, bigotry, greed, selfishness, pettiness, and other 
unheroic, soul-corroding traits. None of these character¬ 
istics can dwell in a man’s heart without ruining his person¬ 
ality. The cherishing of a hatred is a boomerang which 
smites the hater. An envious personality is an impediment 
to any organization or institution, but, even worse than this, 
envy unmistakably makes its mark upon the individual who 
fails to eradicate this especially contemptible trait from his 
life. “ Where envying and strife are, there is confusion and 
every evil work.” The inability to live peaceably with 
others is indicative of a warped attitude toward life and a 
poisoned soul. 

Important as is the capacity to live at peace with one’s 
fellows, Paul is very careful to qualify his advice in regard 
to it. He says: “ if it be possible ” get along with others “ as 
much as it lieth in you.” Even Paul did not find it possible 


LIVING PEACEABLY 


I2 7 

to live at peace with everybody. Neither does any other 
man with strength of convictions and hatred of evil. A sure 
rule for the avoiding of making enemies is: “ Say nothing, 
do nothing, be nothing.” Paul was most emphatically not 
one of this type. He had beheld the heavenly vision, and 
that meant that he was no pusillanimous conformist to en¬ 
throned evil. He had the power of denouncing wrong in 
trenchant words. Certainly Paul had enemies. His en¬ 
mities were not the result of his cherishing petty jealousies 
and selfish antipathies in his heart. He did live peaceably 
with all men as much as it was possible for a good man to 
do this without compromising vital principles. Discord 
which is the result of an unbrotherly spirit is always to be 
condemned, but enmities which are the consequence of 
standing for principle are evidences of genuine Christian 
manhood. 


A BLOTTED RECORD 


And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he 
planted a vineyard: and he dran\ of the wine and 
was drunken. 

Genesis IX, 20-21. 

There was a time in the evolution of the biography when 
the typical work in that field was a stilted, highly eulogistic 
production. If the biographer found anything to the dis¬ 
credit of the subject of his work, he painstakingly concealed 
it. As a result of this method many a fallible human being 
was transformed into a plaster saint. In recent years the 
pendulum has swung far in the other direction. The mud- 
slinging, “ debunking ” biography has become a popular 
publication. Caustic-penned journalists have utilized their 
skill in expression in the producing of biographical works 
exposing the faults of those whom other generations de¬ 
lighted to reverence. The muckraking biographer has not 
neglected biblical characters, who afford a tempting field 
for exploitation by those of his ilk. The Bible does not deal 
with angels or perfect men. It treats of men and women 
possessing the regrettable frailties which have blotted and 
seared souls throughout the ages. The Old Testament 
biographers did not specialize in gloating over human weak¬ 
nesses. Neither were they professional whitewashers of the 
faults of those who erred. When an artist painted a picture 
of Oliver Cromwell, he was about to ignore a mole on the 
face of the Lord Protector, who said: “ Paint me as I am, 
mole and all.” That is just what these ancient biographers 
128 


A BLOTTED RECORD 


129 

did. They were realists. They wasted no time in eulogiz¬ 
ing virtues or condemning faults. Their characters are 
painted as they were. 

In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews the name of Noah is 
mentioned as one deserving a place among the illustrious 
sons of men. And as we study his figure as it is outlined 
dimly against the background of a prehistoric past, we find 
evidence that he was no common man. He stood for right 
when all around him were doing evil. When he was build¬ 
ing the ark, ridicule did not cause him to change his course. 
This is in itself a sign of strength of manhood. There are 
times when it is easier to endure persecution than it is to be 
the object of laughter. All that we know about Noah be¬ 
fore the flood and during it shows him to be a man of 
character and efficiency. 

After the tempest-tossed days are over, we read that 
“ Noah was drunken.” Some charitable commentators have 
tried to excuse him for thus making a spectacle of himself. 
They tell us that probably he underestimated the strength 
of the wine. This may be true. If so, Noah was not the 
last man to make such a mistake. Thousands have con¬ 
sumed drink without realizing that it was going to trans¬ 
form them temporarily into fools or brutes. This, how¬ 
ever, is not the worst way in which men have been deceived 
by strong drink. The young man who flippantly tosses off 
a glass of intoxicant little dreams that in this comparatively 
insignificant act he has made a decision to the effect that 
twenty years later he will be a drunken bum. Wine is a 
mocker. No man has lived to middle life without having 
had pass before his observation example after example of 
its power to ruin lives. 

Noah’s moral debacle occurred when the great strain of 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


I 3 0 

serving God alone, and of passing through the flood, were 
over. This has happened times innumerable. A man goes 
through some great crisis in which he shows ability and 
courage. It seems as if one who could meet such a situation 
would be certain to triumph almost anywhere. But often 
the inglorious and miserable defeat comes in the immediate 
wake of the magnificent victory. There is a reason for this. 
Facing and surmounting a stupendous responsibility taxes 
an individual’s nerve force to its utmost capacity. Then 
comes the reaction. A period of letdown after a crisis is 
always a time of danger. At such an hour the strictest 
watchfulness over one’s thoughts and actions is imperative. 
Then strength of character must supplement physical weak¬ 
ness. Then man must rely upon the help of God, who to¬ 
day as in ages past gives us that power which we need in 
times of moral danger. 

Noah fell at a time when, it would be supposed, life’s 
most acute and dangerous temptations were over. He was 
old enough to have grown sons and had reached the age 
when years of good habits would naturally make the moral 
struggle easier, when the desire to keep an honored name 
untarnished would have its appeal, and the pride of achieve¬ 
ment would be a summons to rectitude. Nevertheless, these 
very incentives to right living may have produced the false 
sense of security which was responsible for his blotting a 
noble record. There is an old saying: “ Victor, tighten thy 
helm-strap.” When one enemy is conquered, another ap¬ 
proaches by a different route. Sometimes the new tempta¬ 
tion may be disguised as an inconsequential pastime or a 
slight deviation from old-time puritanic habits. Years of 
struggle may be followed by a period of relaxation bringing 
unobserved temptations. It was not during his years of war 


A BLOTTED RECORD 


131 

and its accompanying hardships that David fell, but when 
as a powerful king he was living in the ease and luxury of 
the oriental court. There was more danger in the palace 
than upon the field of battle. Man can never get along 
without God. He needs his help and guidance not only in 
the day of adversity and discouragement but just as much 
in the hour of triumph and joy. 


PERENNIALLY NEEDED COUNSEL 


Ta\e heed that no man deceive you . 

Matthew XXIV, 4. 

As Jesus sat with his disciples upon the Mount of Olives, 
he tried to prepare them for some of the situations which 
they would be called upon to face in the years to come. He 
began his discussion by warning them to see to it that they 
be not misled by erroneous propaganda. No more im¬ 
portant advice than this could be given to a human being. 
The great spiritual tragedies of the generations have been 
due to the susceptibility of men to false teachings, deceptive 
reasoning and incorrect information. A life that deviates 
from the path of truth is sooner or later going to be en¬ 
gulfed in the quicksands of error. An individual cannot 
face the realities of existence in the right way unless he has 
the facts of life at his command. No structure that is built 
on the sands of falsehood can endure. One reason for the 
necessity of such advice being given is that human beings 
are notoriously gullible. Dishonest business men have 
preyed upon this unfortunate characteristic of their fellows. 
Stuart Chase and others in their analyses of certain widely 
circulated advertisements have shown how easy it is to mis¬ 
lead buyers. Sometimes it seems as if the public swallows 
advertising lies the way a cat laps up milk. This is but one 
aspect of a deeply imbedded trait. Another of its manifes¬ 
tations is the ease with which any silly cult based on inane 
quibbles and gross misinterpretations of biblical and other 
data can secure followers. In spite of the fact that most 


132 


PERENNIALLY NEEDED COUNSEL 133 

American communities are overchurched, if a neurotic, 
erotic and tommyrotic leader erects a tent on a vacant lot 
and begins to proclaim his ’ism, he will soon have a fol¬ 
lowing. 

Such a state of things is due to the fact that so many of us 
are averse to thinking for ourselves. It is immeasurably 
easier to rehash the opinions of somebody else. Once a 
certain idea gets in motion, especially if it is sententiously 
phrased and has an element of appeal to deeply ingrained 
prejudices, it passes from lip to lip with almost unbelievable 
rapidity. The typical Pullman conversation on politics is 
one of the many evidences. How often even educated men 
believe that an argument is firmly clinched by “ I heard,” 
or “ I have it on good authority,” or “ That’s what every¬ 
body is saying.” 

To study certain extreme statements which in some in¬ 
stances have had a long lease of life is rather illuminating. 
Even yet there are some subintelligent public speakers who 
make this statement: “ If the winding sheets of those who 
have been murdered by the Mormons in Utah could be laid 
side by side, they would cover New England.” Some years 
ago Dr. Washington Gladden on hearing this accusation 
did a problem in arithmetic. He started with the hypothesis 
that a winding sheet covering half a square rod, i 6 l / 2 feet 
in length and 8J4 feet in width, would be ample for most of 
us. Next he figured out that New England contained 
61,976 square miles. He then multiplied this by 640, the 
number of acres in a square mile, and then by 160, the num¬ 
ber of square rods in an acre, and this product by 2, to 
reduce it to half-rods. He found through the working of 
this problem that the Mormons were accused of murdering 
12,692,684,200 persons, about ten times the entire population 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


*34 

of the earth. This is only one of the widely circulated in¬ 
accuracies with which the public has been regaled. 

The surest antidote to fallacious thinking is correct think¬ 
ing. The person who has really learned to think is not the 
victim of the purveyor of foundationless theories and cur¬ 
rent catchwords. He has learned the importance of secur¬ 
ing certain data and the value of straight thinking. He has 
acquired the power of discriminating between make-believe 
and fact, between false and genuine conclusions. In 1838 
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered an address to the students 
of Dartmouth College which contains words to which the 
attention of each new generation should be called: “ Be 
content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore and 
explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position 
of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize nor accept an¬ 
other’s dogmatism.” He who really puts this into practice 
will eventually reach the place where he can see things as 
they are. And in exercising care to avoid the deceptions of 
those who try to distort our vision we are regulating our 
lives in accordance with one of the fundamental teachings 
of the Great Teacher. 


HANDICAPPING BONDS 


'Remember my bonds . 

COLOSSIANS IV, 18. 

The book of Colossians, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, 
was written within prison walls. When Paul wrote it he 
was in a Roman dungeon chained to two soldiers. The 
letter is in part a theological treatise and in part a pastoral 
epistle full of good practical advice. Not until the last verse 
does its author speak of the circumstances under which it 
was produced. Then he laconically says, “ Remember my 
bonds.” He may have done this to ask their prayers for 
him in his hour of adversity, or it may have been to remind 
them of the handicaps under which he labored as he tried 
to express for their benefit the truths which life had taught 
him. At all events, the words furnish the setting for a 
tragic picture. No clearer-visioned, nobler-souled man than 
this Jew of Tarsus had ever stood upon the Western hemi¬ 
sphere. He had in his heart a message which was to turn 
the stream of the centuries out of its channels. But now his 
home was a gloomy prison cell, and his hands were in 
fetters. 

Everywhere are human beings in fetters. No life is with¬ 
out its handicaps. Long ago my pastor, a young man whose 
sun went down while it was yet day, said to me: “ All my 
life I have been battling against handicaps.” Most of us 
could tell the same story. Some are born with limited en¬ 
dowments, physically and intellectually. Others spend years 
in environments which impede their highest development. 
i35 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


136 

As Thomas Gray walked through the softened twilight in 
the little churchyard at Stoke Poges, he remembered the vil¬ 
lage Hampdens, the mute inglorious Miltons, and the ob¬ 
scure Cromwells of whose handicapped lives he said: 

Chill penury repressed their noble rage, 

And froze the genial current of the soul. 

One has this handicap, and one that. The race of life has 
to be run in fetters. 

Handicaps, however, are not unmixed misfortunes. 
Emerson informs us that “ every evil to which we do not 
succumb is a benefactor.” Many a man has won the victory 
in spite of his bonds. Others have transformed handicaps 
into advantages. Mark Twain spent his youth in what he 
called “ a down-at-the-heel, out-at-the-elbows, slave-holding 
Mississippi River town.” When other boys were in high 
school, he was at work in a printing office. His university 
was the pilot’s room on the top of a steamboat. His early 
environment was apparently as far from literature as the 
East is from the West. Yet today it is easy for us to see that 
the first thirty years of his life were the very best possible 
preparation for his career as a man of letters. It is highly 
probable that saturating him with the formalism, the arti¬ 
ficiality and the conventionality of an academic environ¬ 
ment would have atrophied that virile spontaneity without 
which Mark Twain would never have loomed large among 
the makers of books. 

Very often the consciousness of a limitation is in itself an 
evidence of clarity of vision. A sense of perfection is inva¬ 
riably a concomitant of blind egotism. The individual who 
is perfectly satisfied with everything that he does makes a 
fool of himself many times without knowing it. Sometimes 


HANDICAPPING BONDS 


137 

the great task of life is the ridding oneself of defects. In 
other instances it is to so conduct ourselves that we develop 
other characteristics which will overbalance our inevitable 
weakness. We live in a day of intelligence tests. If these 
are not taken too seriously they can be of some pedagogical 
help. But woe to the unfortunate youth who gets it into 
his head that a high grade in one of these performances 
guarantees his success or usefulness among the sons of men. 
That which counts is not the little specialized talent but the 
whole man against the situation. A handicap in itself never 
ruins a life. Many a time it is the key which opens the door 
to a larger usefulness. There are those who can look back 
over their lives and give thanks for the limitations which 
have inspired them to work harder and accomplish more. 


THE TYRANNY OF THE PAST 


Forgetting those things which are behind and 
reaching forth unto those which are before. 

Philippians III, 13. 

To live in the past vitiates the effectiveness of a life. A 
story is going the rounds of an experience of a Chicago 
attorney who was recently making a business trip to a 
somnolent little town in a southern state. When he stepped 
from the train he found nobody at the station except an old 
man with a Van Winkle beard and divers other marks of 
decrepitude. The visitor decided to start a conversation 
with the venerable native, and said: “Isn’t this a terrible 
situation?” The reply was “What situation?” “Why, 
the depression.” “ What depression ? ” Thereupon con¬ 
siderable explaining took place. When the facts dawned 
upon the old man, he casually remarked: “ Well, we can’t 
expect much else as long as we have a president like Mc¬ 
Kinley.” It may be that this anecdote sounds like “ a 
pasted-on ” story, but it cannot be denied that there are 
numerous individuals in every American state who, intel¬ 
lectually, are still living back in the days of McKinley and 
the other leaders of the “ gay ’nineties.” I once knew a man 
who distinguished himself in the Spanish-American War. 
As long as he lived, the calendar never passed beyond 1898. 
Whenever a person lives in the past rather than the present, 
he ceases to be one of the efficient ones of earth. 

Attempts to turn back the clock of time always result 
tragically. As we try to analyze the trends of the thirty odd 
138 


THE TYRANNY OF THE PAST 


139 


years of the present century, we notice that the first eighteen 
years were a period of progressive idealism. Then there 
came a time when the slogan was “ back to normalcy.” In 
the minds of many, such a shibboleth meant a return to the 
pre-Rooseveltian days. No student of recent history needs 
to be reminded of the result. We succeeded in imitating 
all the vices of the earlier period and entirely ignoring its 
virtues. Hard-boiled standpatism has been the dominating 
characteristic of the third decade of the twentieth century. 
The last issue of the New York World contained an edi¬ 
torial discussing a number of the “ major illusions of the 
last decade ”: “ that the surest road to individual prosperity 
was to speculate for a rise in prices; that the value of every¬ 
thing always went up; that it was patriotic to buy luxuries 
out of anticipated earnings; that the American market, if 
it could be monopolized for American producers, was ca¬ 
pable of sustaining an ever mounting prosperity; that our 
technical progress and general enlightenment had abolished 
the business cycle; that we were in a new economic era, and 
that we could promote it best by a nineteenth century tariff 
policy and an eighteenth century diplomatic policy.” In 
the present troubled days these fallacies are being dissipated 
by the clear white light of reality. Timeworn catchwords 
like “scientific management,” “mass production,” and 
“ captain of industry ” have lost some of their magic powers. 
The rehashing of the threadbare slogans of yesterday does 
not help to meet the issues of a portentous hour. 

One day Dean Swift and a friend were walking along 
the streets of Dublin when Swift pointed to a tree that had 
been struck by lightning and said: “ I am going to do like 
that tree; die first at the top.” This proved tragically true 
of the brilliant dean of St. Patrick’s, but many a perfectly 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


140 

sane man has “ died at the top ” because in his intellectual 
life he has looked backward rather than forward. Walter 
de la Mare tells us it is easy for one to get stuck fast in his 
own yesterdays. What we thought and said and did yester¬ 
day we are likely to think and say and do tomorrow. Con¬ 
sequently there is a never ceasing danger of our believing 
that the past represents the sum total of human wisdom. 
Neither Paul nor any other sensible man would advocate 
the utter discarding of the past. This can never be done. 
But an idolatry of the past, a bondage to the thoughts of the 
vanished decades makes for individual and social ineffec¬ 
tiveness. The great tasks of the world have never been 
accomplished by those who have lingered around the 
sunken wrecks of dead issues. 

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good 
uncouth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must 
Pilgrims be, 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the des¬ 
perate winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood- 
rusted key. 


THE VISIBILITY OF SIN 


Be sure your sin will find you out. 

Numbers XXXII, 23. 

In one of Daniel Webster’s monumental court addresses, 
once familiar to every schoolboy, there is a passage which 
has to do with the utter inability of a murderer to keep his 
secret: “ Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole 
creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty 
can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye 
which pierces through all disguises, and beholds everything 
as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt can never 
escape detection, even by men. True it is, that Providence 
hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who 
break the great law of Heaven by shedding man’s blood 
seldom succeed in avoiding discovery.” 

In being unconcealable, murder is not unique among sins. 
The sinner lives in a house of glass. Sooner or later the 
world will know his guilty secret. No sin stands by itself. 
Each deviation from the standard of right makes another 
possible. Macbeth committed one murder. This made 
others inevitable. The peculating banker falsifies his ac¬ 
counts in one place, and a dozen other forgeries are necessary 
in order to avoid discovery. A young man joins with a 
gang of thieves in one crime and he is at their mercy. 
What they command he must do. It is easier to conceal one 
sin than it is twenty, but the isolated sin is the exception. 
The man who has the clearness of vision to see that he has 
started on the road and is able to say, “ Get thee behind me, 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


142 

Satan,” has gained a glorious spiritual victory. To commit 
sin after sin is to entangle oneself in a net. Every added 
sin makes concealment more difficult. 

All of the people cannot be fooled all of the time. Sheep’s 
clothing can disguise a wolf for a long time, but such mas¬ 
querades are not permanent. A double life cannot be kept 
a secret. Sooner or later its hypocrisy is disclosed. There 
are many reasons for this. One is that continued sin atro¬ 
phies the intellect. Base living produces base thinking. 
Life in a sty of sensuality is not conducive to either clarity 
or breadth of thought. Ethical derelictions tend to blunt 
the perceptions. To serve two masters one must step care¬ 
fully. Carrying water on both shoulders requires consid¬ 
erable skill. Human beings are intensely interested in other 
human beings. The world is full of those who specialize 
in discovering all that is discreditable about others. Under 
such circumstances it is hard to sin without others finding 
it out. And there comes a time when sin has so disintegrated 
the mental powers of the sinner that he no longer possesses 
the consummate skill without which it is impossible to con¬ 
ceal that which in the very nature of things cannot be 
hidden. 

Then, too, sin begets carelessness. If a person sins year 
after year with apparent impunity, he can readily delude 
himself into believing that the road before him is clear, that 
there is no danger of discovery. It is a generally accepted 
fact among students of criminology that sometimes the 
most experienced and skilful criminals seem to walk delib¬ 
erately into the clutches of the law. This can easily be ex¬ 
plained on the grounds that overconfidence produces a state 
of mind which causes him to grow a little more careless as 
the years pass by without his having to pay for his misdeeds. 


THE VISIBILITY OF SIN 


143 

The person who stumbles upon his very entrance to a sinful 
course is to be congratulated rather than pitied. He has the 
opportunity to retreat from the path of destruction before he 
has traveled so far along it that the chance to go back has 
become less and less. Those who have journeyed a long 
distance down the road of wickedness are not likely to walk 
with any particular care. They feel that as they have thus 
far escaped exposure and punishment there is no need to 
worry about consequences. The result is that then their sin 
finds them out. 

The whole history of the human race is a proof of the 
visibility of sin. Many times the apparent exceptions to the 
working of this law are due to our not knowing the facts. 
That sin can never be absolutely secret is one of the under¬ 
lying laws of the universe. 


SOLIDARITY 


All the rivers run into the sea . 

Ecclesiastes I, 7. 

Every drop of water in the world gravitates in the direction 
of the sea. This is true not only of the majestic river but 
also of the smallest brook that trickles down the side of the 
mountain. A few blocks down the street there sluggishly 
creeps across the meadow a little stream which we designate 
by the picturesque appellation of Jaw-Bone Run. It flows 
into the Buckhannon River, which in its turn joins the 
Tygart’s Valley River. The Tygart’s Valley and the West 
Fork unite to form the Monongahela. In Pittsburgh, at the 
very site of old Fort Pitt, the Monongahela and the Alle¬ 
gheny become the Ohio, which at the end of its course 
flows into the Mississippi. This “father of waters” dis¬ 
charges its mile-wide tide into the Gulf of Mexico, an arm 
of the Atlantic Ocean. Thus our own insignificant litde 
creek is a part of the ocean system of the world. 

It is just as true that every life is a part of the great hu¬ 
man family. We are members one of another. What helps 
one helps all. What injures the individual injures society. 
Never was this more apparent than it is today. The setting 
of our lives is not provincial but international. One can 
sit by his fireside in a home on the most isolated mountain 
and hear voices from across the sea. When a man rises in 
the morning he uses a towel from Turkey and a cake of 
soap made in a factory in Cincinnati. His linen comes from 
Belfast and his necktie from Paris. His suit was woven in 


144 


SOLIDARITY 


145 

Birmingham. His shoes are of leather made from the 
hides of catde which grazed on the pampas of South Amer¬ 
ica. His coffee was grown in far-away Java and his beef¬ 
steak is the product of a New Mexico ranch and the oranges 
came from a grove in Florida. His contacts for the whole 
day could be traced in the same manner. 

Dr. Fosdick shows us how a single piece of linoleum is 
the product of the ends of the earth. It is made of jute 
from India, cork from Algeria, and linseed oil from Ar¬ 
gentina. This does not tell all of the story, but at least three 
continents combine to produce this one article. Fifty-seven 
countries furnish the material used to manufacture an ordi¬ 
nary steel knife. When you step into your car to drive 
around the block, remember that all parts of the earth have 
made contributions to add to the comfort of your journey. 
It would be interesting to know how many continents have 
contributed to the making of the typewriter upon which I 
write these words. Robinson Crusoe on his island was in¬ 
dependent. Our debts to the service of others are immeas¬ 
urable. It has been estimated that the modern man has the 
equivalent of thirty thousand servants at his beck and call. 

All of this has the widest of ethical implications. A tex¬ 
tile mill in New England closed on account of lack of 
orders. An investigation was made as to the reasons and it 
was discovered that the fundamental cause was the fact 
that American women had adopted the custom of bobbing 
their hair. The situation was as follows: The goods which 
the textile mill manufactured were used in Korea. The 
people of that section of Korea made their livings for the 
most part by manufacturing hair-nets which were sold in 
America. When the demand for these ceased they could no 
longer buy the textiles and the result was that here in Amer- 


I46 TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 

ica thousands were thrown out of work. Thus the ma¬ 
chinery of modern life works. 

“ Let them stew in their own grease.” These words were 
uttered about twelve years ago by an American business 
man in an argument as to whether or not America had a 
responsibility toward the nations of Europe. It is entirely 
within the range of possibility that such a point of view has 
been one of the factors in the producing of the economic 
chaos in which the world finds itself today. After the Dec¬ 
laration of Independence had been signed, somebody re¬ 
marked, “We must all hang together now,” and Benjamin 
Franklin replied: “Yes, we must hang together or else we 
shall hang separately.” “ The strength of the wolf is the 
pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf.” No man 
liveth to himself alone. No nation liveth to itself alone. 
Together we rise or fall. 

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, 
Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift clash of right or 
wrong; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast 
frame 

Through its ocean-sundered fibers feels the gush of joy or 
shame; — 

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 


THE FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT 


He hath showed thee, O mart, what is good; and 
what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to wal\ humbly with thy 
God? 

Micah VI, 8 . 

Micah was not one of the mountain-peak figures in Judean 
history. He was a contemporary of Isaiah and has always 
been somewhat overshadowed by that clarion-voiced 
prophet of spiritual reality. Isaiah was a man of the city. 
Micah spent his whole life among his native mountains of 
Moresheth-gath. We have but fragments of his message. 
Yet we have enough of it to demonstrate that he, too, was 
a man of clear insight and dauntless courage. And it is in 
this rather obscure book by this comparatively unknown 
prophet that we find the noble words of which Thomas 
Henry Huxley says: “In the eighth century before Christ, 
in the heart of a world of idolatry, a Hebrew prophet put 
forth a conception of religion which is as wonderful an 
inspiration of genius as the art of Phidias or the science of 
Aristotle: ‘What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy 
God ? * ” 

Like that of the other Hebrew prophets the message of 
Micah was ethical. These clear-visioned seers were pro¬ 
testers against the petty formalism which shriveled-souled 
pedants in all ages have substituted for righteousness. It 
was the rugged Amos of Tekoa who thundered forth the 
words: “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not 
147 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


148 

smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt 
offerings and your meat offerings I will not accept them: 
neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. 
. . . But let judgment roll down as waters and righteous¬ 
ness as a mighty stream.” 

Micah’s stressing of the idea of justice comes very near to 
the center of religious truth. A religion that is not ethical 
is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. I once heard a man 
say: “ I always try to be a little bit more than square in my 
dealings with others.” To do this is meeting a fundamental 
requirement of the higher life. It would not be hard to col¬ 
lect hundreds of definitions of sin. Some of these are 
phrased in language which is not comprehensible to all of 
us. But it is not difficult to understand ideas that are ex¬ 
pressed in terms of everyday life. To say that any failure on 
the part of an individual to practice justice in his dealings 
with his fellow men is the committing of a sin is expressing 
an incontrovertible truth. 

We have all, probably, come into contact with men drip¬ 
ping with an unctuous and ostentatious piety who were 
rascals in business. When Phillips Brooks was a student 
in theological seminary he noticed that some of the men 
who were super-devout in prayer-meeting were slipshod and 
essentially dishonest in the classroom. A preacher was once 
called to the home of a family who had applied to his church 
for aid. Although their names were not on his church 
record and they had never been inside of the church they 
claimed to be active adherents of the ecclesiastical fellowship 
of which this clergyman was a member. Even more than 
this they informed him that they were “ sanctified.” Since 
the house was unspeakably dirty and its inmates sitting 
around in idleness, the pastor was moved to remark that in 


THE FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT 149 

his opinion if the members of that family were sanctified 
the house would be somewhat cleaner. This is getting down 
to brass tacks. Yet the test of the reality of any man’s re¬ 
ligion is his faithfulness in the sphere of common duties. 

This, however, is not all. In Micah’s great text the 
thought of loving mercy is associated with that of doing 
justly. Rigid justice is not enough. 

We do pray for mercy; 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy. 

God’s justice is not a relentless demanding of an eye for 
an eye and a tooth for a tooth. All men like sheep have 
gone astray. Man’s walking in truth is ever a succession of 
falls. Ian Maclaren used to say: “ Be pitiful; every man is 
fighting a hard fight.” This is the spirit which tempers 
justice with that charity which suffereth long and is kind. 

The third requirement in Micah’s great text is “ to walk 
humbly with thy God.” The Hebrew prophets, in spite of 
their strong stressing of right living, were not the pro¬ 
tagonists of a non-religious ethical culture. Their teaching 
combined the mystical with the practical. To walk with 
God means to possess an ever-present consciousness of spir¬ 
itual reality. William Cowper must have had this text in 
mind when he wrote: 

O for a closer walk with God, 

A calm and heavenly frame; 

A light to shine upon the road 
That leads me to the Lamb. 

The closer a man walks with God the more likely he is to 
do justice and to love mercy. 


THE BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 


For we have not an high priest which cannot be 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was 
in all points tempted li\e as we are, yet without sin. 

Hebrews IV, 15. 


To every man there openeth 
A way, and ways, and a way, 

And the high soul climbs the high way, 

And the low soul gropes the low; 

And in between, on the misty flats, 

The rest drift to and fro. 

But to every man there openeth 
A high way and a low, 

And every man decideth 
The way his soul shall go. 

Even the Son of Man was not exempted from the responsi¬ 
bility of choosing whether he was going to travel the High 
Way or the Low. In the temptation in the wilderness the 
issue was put directly before him. Was he going to per¬ 
form the great task of human redemption for which he was 
sent into the world, or was he going to seek comfort and 
wealth with their concomitants? His temptations were 
typical of those with which every young idealist must grap¬ 
ple at the outset of his career. 

First, Satan tempted him to turn the stones of the moun¬ 
tain into bread. The temptation in this instance was to 
substitute the seeking of physical comfort for obedience to 


THE BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 151 

his Father’s will. Most of us are basically ease-loving 
animals, and modern life has tended to accentuate this 
characteristic. How comfortable are our lives even in com¬ 
parison with those of our fathers and mothers! The mid¬ 
dle-aged man in modest circumstances is surrounded by 
comforts which would have been the epitome of luxury to 
the millionaire of two generations ago. It has been estimated 
that the average person has at his command in modern 
household equipment the equivalent of thirty servants. 
Bernard Iddings Bell expresses the thought as follows: “ As 
for comfort, we twentieth century people are soothingly 
immersed in it. Ours is a steamheated well-lighted, cun¬ 
ningly upholstered, warm-bathed generation. . . >. From 
twilight-sleep birth to narcotized death we insist upon ease.” 

Under such circumstances our slogan is likely to be 
“ Comfort at any cost.” A deification of ease does not tend 
to develop the spirit of discipline, self-denial or cross-bear¬ 
ing. Jesus asked men to take up their cross. Such a call 
makes little appeal to those who have allowed the luxuries 
of an age of ease to weaken the fiber of the soul. The first 
temptation is one to which our generation is peculiarly 
susceptible. 

The second temptation also was based upon a deeply in¬ 
grained human desire. Man is so constructed that he is 
anxious to accumulate possessions. Very often the ability 
to gather wealth is the most deeply reverenced human trait. 
A distinguished clergyman, talking to a large audience, 
went a long distance out of his way to show his broad 
sympathies with the exploited, but his address was decorated 
with numerous phrases like, “I have a wealthy friend,” 
“ The other day I was talking to an intimate friend who is 
one of the richest men in the Middle West,” “ A millionaire 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


152 

friend was telling me the other day —His lip service 
was to our lady poverty, but his real deity was the god of 
possession. There was nothing unique in his standard. In 
his Prologue Chaucer depicts in several cases the same cring¬ 
ing before the accumulator of “ much goods.” 

Occasionally we are told that Americans are to an unusual 
degree addicted to this form of paganism. The rhymster 
has thus analyzed our national characteristic: 

France has the lily and England the rose, 

And everyone knows where the Shamrock grows. 

In Scotland the heather blooms on every rocky hill, 

But the emblem of America is the one-dollar bill. 

Even though this fault may not be exclusively American, 
our background influences are such as to make it exceed¬ 
ingly pronounced. As Burke says, “We represent the Dissi- 
dence of Dissent, the Protestantism of the Protestant Re¬ 
ligion.” Few of us have escaped the influence of John 
Calvin, and the stern Genevan taught that there was no 
incompatibility between the accumulation of property and 
Christianity. The Puritan, as a rule, has been a decidedly 
thrifty individual. He has sometimes been accused of 
“ keeping the Sabbath and everything else he got his hands 
on.” At all events, making a fortune has been regarded as 
a performance of commendable piety. Then, too, our an¬ 
cestors were pioneers. Most of them came up out of great 
tribulation. To work hard, to save and to add property to 
property is a deeply inbred quality with the average Ameri¬ 
can. Although this is not without its admirable aspects, 
it makes us particularly susceptible to the second temptation. 

The third temptation was a suggestion that Jesus throw 
himself from the pinnacle of the temple, to perform an 


THE BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS 153 

entirely useless action for the sake of display. Here, again, 
was the appeal made to a marked characteristic of the hu¬ 
man race. Man likes to be respected. He craves admira¬ 
tion. Consequently, he is prone to “ show off.” He wants 
wealth so that he can purchase that which can be seen. He 
loves power because it is admired. We are more afraid of 
Mrs. Grundy than we are of hostile armies. Advertisers 
unethically appeal to this petty complex by word or impli¬ 
cation. They say: “Be brilliant. Buy this tooled leather 
Scrap-Book for $2.98 and it will transform you from a social 
nonentity to a scintillating sage.” “ Smoke our brand of 
cigarette and it will make you as attractive as this girl on 
the cover of the magazine.” “ Buy this expensive car which 
you can’t afford so that your neighbors will envy you.” 
The number of social ills which may be traced to the desire 
to be conspicuously envied is legion. It has been responsible 
for many a petty, selfish, utterly ignoble life. 

The temptations in the wilderness have the setting of a 
far-away land and an ancient world, but fundamentally they 
are those which confront us as we are called to choose be¬ 
tween the High Way of moral responsibility and the Low 
Way of subservience to the flesh. 


THE PAULINE PARADOX 


For when l am wea\, then am l strong. 

II Corinthians XII, io. 

At first glance these words impress us as being inexpli¬ 
cably contradictory. How can a man be strong when he is 
weak? Strength and weakness are diametrically opposite 
to each other. But as we think a little farther Paul’s words 
speedily untangle themselves. Like many another great 
writer he is using the figure of speech which we call a para¬ 
dox. Tennyson did the same thing when he spoke of the 
loyalty of Sir Launcelot to his guilty love: 

His honor rooted in dishonor stood, 

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. 

In Francis Thompson’s “ The Hound of Heaven ” we read 
the words, “ His traitorous trueness and his loyal deceit.” 
Some of the greatest truths of life are expressed in the form 
of contradictions. When Paul said that when he was weak 
he was strong he was simply stating that like many another 
he had learned to transmute his defects into virtues. 

Paul was not devoid of weakness. Although he towers 
high above many of the pre-eminent figures of history he 
was not without his human limitations. It seems to be 
generally agreed that he was unimpressive in appearance, 
although this is but an inference. We do know, however, 
that he suffered from some physical malady which he called 
his “ thorn in the flesh.” Intellectually he was not without 
faults. He had such definite and positive convictions that 
iS4 


THE PAULINE PARADOX 


155 

he had in him something of the bigot. At times he showed 
a relentless intolerance of any opposition. He had the 
capacity of blazing indignation and he did not always keep 
his temper under perfect control. There were times when 
in speaking of those who had aroused his ire he dashed off 
such corrosive, blasting sentences as, “ Beware of the dogs.” 
“ Alexander, the blacksmith, has done me a lot of harm: 
the Lord will pay him back for what he has done,” is too 
typical an utterance of the apostle to the Western world. 
Frequently he was sensitive almost to the point of morbidity. 
Again and again he uttered despairing words like, “ I know 
that in me . . . dwelleth no good thing. . . . For the good 
which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not 
that I practice. . . . Wretched man that I am! Who shall 
deliver me out of the body of this death ? ” 

To mention Paul’s faults is not necessarily to minimize 
him. His imperfections are the hallmark of his humanity. 
The fact that he was conscious of them indicates that he 
was not besotted with a vitiating sense of superiority. A 
lack of satisfaction with oneself is the first requisite of prog¬ 
ress. In acquiring the ability to capitalize his limitations, 
Paul had learned one of life’s greatest lessons. His excessive 
sensitiveness gave him an idealism which is invariably lack¬ 
ing in the morally obtuse. The tenacity of conviction bor¬ 
dering upon bigotry generated his unswerving and dauntless 
devotion to the cause with which he had allied himself. 
Because he could turn his very weaknesses into sources of 
power Paul lived a victorious life. 

In “ The Deserted Village ” Goldsmith, speaking of the 
over-kindly parson, said: “ Even his failings leaned to vir¬ 
tue’s side.” Most human failings lean in that direction. In 
learning how to live it is imperative that we acquire Paul’s 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


156 

art of transforming our weakness into strength. Many a 
man has done it. A generation ago it was noised around a 
college that a certain great teacher had been a very ordinary 
student. This in itself was one of the secrets of his effective¬ 
ness. Because he was of but average mentality he under¬ 
stood the problems and the needs of the typical student in a 
way that a more brilliant man could not have done. I think 
of a man who in his youth was handicapped by an excep¬ 
tional degree of timidity. This fault, of course, had to be 
overcome, but during the solitary years when its victim fled 
the crowd he discovered his own internal resources and be¬ 
cause of this he will be good company for himself as long 
as he lives. Another had the dubious gift of a blistering 
sarcasm which could easily have blasted his career. He 
overcame it by making it an element which lends piquancy, 
color and individuality to his language. Three of the out¬ 
standing American authors are afflicted with various degrees 
of deafness. One wonders at the extent to which their 
defect has contributed to their achievement by shutting them 
away from the hubbub of routine existence. 

To capitulate to a weakness makes it an impediment to 
self-development and usefulness. The ability to transmute 
a hindrance into a help is one of the most beneficent gifts 
of God to man. We are strong to the degree to which we 
can make our weakness strength. 


THE PRIMACY OF THE SOUL 


For what is a man profited if he shall gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul? 

Matthew XVI, 26. 

This text has too frequently been interpreted entirely in 
terms of the other world. The one idea which it has been 
made to convey is that no amount of success in this world 
would be an adequate compensation for an eternity in the 
abode of the lost. Although no one can object to the truth¬ 
fulness of this interpretation, it is open to criticism on ac¬ 
count of its not being sufficiently inclusive. The reducing 
of the passage to an exercise in eschatology robs it of much 
of its dynamic ethical appeal. The person who loses his 
soul in the other world first loses it in this one. Once Mark 
Hopkins was asked by a student to indicate who would go 
to heaven. He replied: “ I don’t know whether this one or 
that one will go. But whoever would be likely to feel at 
home in heaven will be found there when the time comes.” 
The tragedy would be not that somebody did not get to 
heaven, but that he had allowed his soul to so disintegrate 
that he had become unfit to go there. 

Another classroom tradition in regard to Mark Hopkins 
has a definite bearing upon this text. He is quoted as hav¬ 
ing put the question of Jesus in the following language: 
“ You would like to have this world, as much of it at least 
as you want. Would you be willing to have the world, 
all of it you want, and be deaf? Perhaps you would. Would 
you be willing to have the world, all of it you want, and 
iS7 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


I58 

be deaf and dumb? Perhaps you would. Would you be 
willing to have the world, all of it that you want, and be 
deaf and dumb and blind ? Perhaps you would, but I doubt 
it; for the time comes in such a reckoning when you must 
pass the issue of being or having.” 

This matter of “ being or having ” is the central idea of 
these mountain-peak words of Jesus. On a shelf before me 
I see a book by Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis which I bought 
during my college days. I opened it this afternoon for the 
first time in years, but its title, A Man's Value to Society, 
is a combination of words which is hard to forget. What 
determines the value of a given individual to society? 
Most certainly it is not what he has. If this were the case, 
the most valuable men in America in many instances would 
be grabbing financial racketeers, exploiters of their fellow- 
men and sybaritic parasites. Is it what one does? An af¬ 
firmative answer here would be more convincing. But it 
is hard to separate doing and being. A man with a little 
soul can never do a genuinely big piece of work. What a 
person is, is the measure of his worth. An inner shrinkage 
is a major calamity. 

In Kipling’s Tomlinson the Devil tells the half-and-half, 
compromising, equivocating shirker of responsibility that 
he had “ scarce the soul of a louse.” Our thoughts, our 
words, our recreations, our interests, our contacts, all the 
elements of life have to do with the making of our souls. 
No one can live on the plane of animalism without his soul 
becoming bestialized. A philosophy of grab-and-get is sui¬ 
cidal to the nobler characteristics of humanity. A dominat¬ 
ing concern with the trivial makes a person a pitiable ex¬ 
ample of ignorance, shallowness and downright silliness. 
Narrow sympathies circumscribe the horizon of a life. 


THE PRIMACY OF THE SOUL 159 

Vanity, insincerity, selfishness, greed of place or applause 
are incompatible with greatness of soul. 

The assertion of the primacy of the soul has been too ex¬ 
clusively thought of in terms of rewards and punishments. 
Salvation is a term with much larger implications than 
simply avoiding punishment. It has to do with the bringing 
of personality to its highest fruition. The time-honored 
phrase, “ going on to perfection,” has a definite applicability 
here. Nothing can compensate a man for the loss of his 
noblest self. Exteriors count only as they reflect the inner 
life: 

Ah! what avails to understand 
The merits of a spotless shirt, 

A dapper boot, a slender hand, 

If half the little soul be dirt ? 

The saving of a soul is the keeping it unspotted from the 
world, the conserving of its richest powers, the fitting it for 
its place in the Kingdom of God. As a substitute for this, 
all external accomplishments and rewards are but as apples 
of Sodom. The supreme worth of the soul is a truth set 
forth again and again by Jesus Christ in his words, his life 
and his sacrificial death on the cross. 


ENEMIES OF JESUS 


And they cried out again, Crucify him. 

Mark XV, 13. 

Once when Tammany was vigorously opposing Grover 
Cleveland in a political convention, one of the president’s 
champions retorted, “ I like him for the enemies that he has 
made.” Every man who takes a positive stand for right is 
certain to arouse animosity, and sometimes the brightest star 
in the crown of a man’s life is the fact that he has dared to 
make enemies. It is no credit to a person to say that he has 
never incited any hostility. 

You have no enemies, you say? 

Alas! My friend, the boast is poor; 

He who has mingled in the fray 
Of duty, that the brave endure, 

Must have foes! If you have none, 

Small is the work that you have done. 

You’ve hit no traitor on the hip, 

You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip, 

You’ve never turned the wrong to right, 

You’ve been a coward in the fight. 

Naturally Jesus had enemies. His three-year ministry was 
no period of rose-scented tranquillity. During that short 
time he aroused so many animosities that those who hated 
him had him nailed upon the cross. To study the enemies 
of Jesus is highly illuminating. For the most part they 
were highly respected Palestinians, pillars of society. 

Chief among them were the Pharisees, the representatives 
of the old-time Hebrew orthodoxy. It would be entirely 

160 


ENEMIES OF JESUS 


161 


erroneous to regard them as utterly bad. They were men of 
deep principles to which they were tenaciously loyal. They 
were defending the faith of their fathers in a time of world 
chaos. They were, however, excessively afraid of the new. 
Their worship of ancestral light caused them to look upon 
later light as a crime. They became persecutors of Jesus 
because they looked upon him as a dangerous “ modernist.” 
They were spiritual cowards because they failed to sense 
the progressiveness of God’s revelation. 

Another group of the enemies of Jesus consisted of those 
with whose business he interfered. When he saw that the 
courtyard of the temple had become a market, or as he 
called it, a “ den of thieves,” he upset the tables of these petty 
ecclesiastical grafters and with a whip of small cords chased 
them from the once holy precincts. We are not directly 
told of the immediate backfire of this incident. Neither do 
we need any information. Our knowledge of humanity 
tells us. Men become exceedingly angry when anyone in¬ 
terferes with their incomes. The preacher who denounces 
war can be absolutely sure of the bitter enmity of the 
munitions-maker or the professional profiteer who miscalls 
his racket patriotism. Manufacturers and purveyors of 
liquor, as well as those engaged in business closely allied 
with the traffic in intoxicants, always have the utmost con¬ 
tempt for all opponents of the sale of drink. Have we any 
reason to doubt that some of the money-changers and sellers 
of doves whom he had driven from the temple were in the 
crowds that yelled, “ Crucify him! Crucify him! ”? It is 
safe to infer that the high priests who were so active in the 
persecution looked upon Jesus’ cleansing the temple as an 
interference with their perquisites. 

But the worst enemies of Jesus belonged neither to these 
groups nor to the unthinking mob which helped them to 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


l62 

drag him through the streets. Those who completely ig¬ 
nored him were just as responsible for the tragedy at Gol¬ 
gotha as the Jewish mob or the Roman soldiers. To pay 
no attention to Jesus is to ally ourselves with those who 
persecuted him and put him to death. Studdert Kennedy 
expresses this thought in the lines: 

When Jesus came to Golgotha they hanged him on a tree, 
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made 
a Calvary; 

They crowned him with a crown of thorns, red were the 
wounds and deep, 

For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was 
cheap. 

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed him 

b y. 

They never hurt a hair of him, they only let him die; 

For men had grown more tender, and they would not give 
him pain, 

They only just passed down the street, and left him in the 
rain. 

Still Jesus cried, “Forgive them for they know not what 
they do,” 

And still it rained the winter rain that drenched him 
through and through. 

The crowds went home and left the streets without a 
crowd to see, 

And Jesus crouched against a wall and cried for Calvary. 

Jesus stands at the center of the life of the world. There 
can be no neutrality in regard to him. To leave him alone 
is to decide against him. 


THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN 


And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten 
cleansed? but where are the nine? 

Luke XVII, 17. 

Ten lepers, men with scarred bodies, shunned, isolated and 
suffering, with no prospect before them but to become more 
loathsome until their bodies fell to pieces, approached Jesus 
as he was about to enter an unnamed village. Apparently 
they had heard of his curing diseases and they cried: “ Jesus, 
Master, have mercy upon us! ” Jesus replied, “ Go show 
yourselves to the priest,” there being a Levitical law that a 
cleansed leper must receive a bill of health from a priest be¬ 
fore he could again participate in the activities of society. 
This reply of Jesus was essentially an assurance that they 
would find themselves cured by the time they had reached 
the priestly presence. This is the way the matter worked 
out. Nine of them went on their way. One, a Samaritan, 
came back to Jesus and thanked him. In acknowledging the 
gratitude of the thoughtful alien Jesus said, “ But where 
are the nine? ” 

At first thought it would seem that men who had been 
relieved of such an unspeakable disease would go far out 
of their way to show their gratitude to the one who had 
rendered them such an inestimable service. Such a hy¬ 
pothesis, however, takes too optimistic a view of human 
nature. The proportion of those who make any sacrifice 
whatever in order to show that they are grateful for the 
kindnesses which they have received is exceedingly small. 

163 


104 TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 

Mark Twain, in one of those bitter sentences to which he 
was so frequently addicted, expressed his philosophy in 
these words: “ If you pick up a starving dog and make him 
prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the difference be¬ 
tween a dog and a man.” Those who have given money, 
time, energy, thought and sympathy to the doing of acts 
of helpfulness could very readily grow pessimistic of hu¬ 
manity as they recall some of their experiences. 

Although ingratitude is not mentioned among the seven 
deadly sins of medieval theology, moralists throughout the 
generations have looked upon it as a major fault of the 
human race. Dean Swift thus refers to its inclusiveness: 
“ He that calls a man ungrateful, sums up all the evil of 
which one can be guilty,” and Thomas Fuller characterizes it 
as follows: “Ingratitude is the abridgment of baseness; a 
fault never unattended with other viciousness.” Yet ingrati¬ 
tude would not, as a rule, be mentioned among the grosser 
derelictions. It is basically a respectable sin. A little think¬ 
ing, nevertheless, convinces one that those who have spoken 
of it with such contumely are correct in their diagnosis. 
Dante, who was a specialist in sin, places in the lowest circles 
of his Hell those guilty of disloyalty, and ingratitude is trea¬ 
sonous. Never does it exist alone. Invariably it is accom¬ 
panied by selfishness and in most of its manifestations by 
pride and callousness. 

Then the question arises: “ Why are we, much as we 
admire loyalty, ever guilty of this sin ? ” This interrogation 
correctly assumes that most of us would have been among 
the nine who went on their way forgetful of their bene¬ 
factor. These nine were not necessarily villains. They 
were simply thoughtless, and thoughtlessness and selfish¬ 
ness are closely akin. They took their cleansing for granted. 


THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN 165 

Most ingratitude is the result of regarding kindnesses as a 
matter of course. Probably all of us have seen examples of 
cases of flagrant failure to show a grateful spirit to someone 
from whom much had been received. Others of us may 
have experienced it in such a way as to wound our souls. 
Possibly some of us have even been guilty of outstanding 
sins in this regard. Moreover, it is practically certain that 
most of us have not been as thoughtful as we should have 
been concerning someone who did us a kindness in the 
days gone by. It is likely that even now a number of us 
can think of a person well along in years to whom we owe 
a little kindly consideration which in the pressure of ac¬ 
tivities we have allowed ourselves to forget. 

When we remember past years we can think of number¬ 
less blessings with which God has endowed us. In times 
when we felt that we were beset upon every side, he led us 
onward. In the hours when the sky was completely over¬ 
cast, his light shone upon our pathway. Yet again and 
again we complain about the unkind dispensations of provi¬ 
dence. We think of God in the time of calamity, but when 
blessings multiply we credit ourselves with them and forget 
all that lies beyond the visible. Now and then thoughtfully 
and prayerfully we should read that wonderful poem of the 
ancient world, Psalm CIII, with its paean of grateful praise 
beginning: “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is 
within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, 
and forget not all his benefits.” 


THE GRACE OF ADAPTABILITY 


/ am made all things to all men. 

I Corinthians IX, 22. 

If we were reading these words for the first time, in a dif¬ 
ferent context, they would startle us. Being all things to 
all men, in the most obvious sense of the expression, would 
be a contemptible trait. A man of considerable promi¬ 
nence was recommended for a position of leadership in 
these words: “ When he is among fundamentalists he makes 
them believe that he agrees with them, and when he is 
among modernists he causes them to think that he is on 
their side.” This is being all things to all men in the worst 
sense. 

That subtle, practical psychologist, John Bunyan, de¬ 
scribes a person of this type in one Mr. By-Ends of the town 
of Fair Speech who thus tells of the social adaptability of 
him and his wife: “Yes, and my wife is a very virtuous 
woman, the daughter of a virtuous woman; she was my 
Lady Feigning’s daughter; therefore she came of a very 
honorable family, and is arrived to such a pitch of breeding 
that she knows how to carry it all, even to prince and peas¬ 
ant. ’Tis true, we somewhat differ from those of the stricter 
sort, yet in two small points: First, we never strive against 
wind and tide. Secondly, we are always most zealous when 
Religion gets in his silver slippers; we love much to walk 
with him in the street, if the sun shines and people applaud 
him.” And he further explains how fortunate he had been 
that he had always had the luck to “ jump ” with his “ judg¬ 
ment with the present way of the times, whatever it was.” 

166 


THE GRACE OF ADAPTABILITY 167 

No literary man of the closing years of the seventeenth 
century had more solid ability than John Dryden, yet there is 
a decided lack in his character, a weakness which reflects 
itself in his writings. He was born in a Puritan home and 
in his young manhood wrote a poem to Cromwell. When 
the Puritans were overthrown he provided another poem 
welcoming Charles II back to the throne. At this period 
of his life he was loyal to the church of England. When 
James II, a Catholic, became king, Dryden was converted 
to Catholicism. It must be said to his credit that he did 
not change his faith when Protestant rulers again came into 
power. His years of devotion to the rising sun are not our 
only reason for regarding him as being what we call a 
trimmer. Obscene plays were in demand, and Dryden 
deliberately prostituted his talent to providing the public 
with them. 

However, Paul was never all things to all men in this 
way. He had convictions to which he was tenaciously loyal. 
To understand his adaptability we must first know its 
purpose. “ I am made all things to all men, that I might 
by all means save some. This I do for the gospel’s sake.” 
Paul was no fawning, sycophantic self-seeker. He was not 
like 

The man who hails you Tom — or Jack, 

And proves by thumping on your back 
His sense of your great merit. 

He adapted himself to all types of humanity in order to 
bring into their lives “ Jesus and him crucified.” And what 
a versatility he showed! With the Jews he was a Jew, being 
of their race by ancestry and training. As a Roman citizen 
he could greet other citizens of the world-dominating em- 


168 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


pire. In his education there was an element of Greek which 
further enhanced the catholicity of his sympathies. To the 
weak he became weak that he might gain them. 

Nothing is more difficult for most of us than to live up 
to the motto, “ Put yourself in his place.” The inability to 
do this indicates a lack of imagination, and without that 
quality there can be no social sympathy. Paul was a strong 
man with the power of sympathetically entering into the 
lives of the weak. As he was somewhat of a cosmopolitan, 
petty national antipathies meant less to him than to most 
of us. Yet we must not think that Paul’s inclusive sympathy 
was purely the result of an exceptionally broad environment. 
Like everybody else he had his limitations of sympathy. 
His great personal achievement was the transcending of the 
barriers which separate man from man. The accomplishing 
of this could not have been easy. It is not a light task for 
any of us. 

A warped, provincial type of patriotism, if we can use in 
this connection a word with many noble associations, causes 
many of us to close entirely the doors of our lives to those of 
other nationalities. Racial and class prejudices militate in 
the same way. Sometimes the barrier between the genera¬ 
tions seems to be almost insurmountable. It behooves the 
older generation to do their utmost to understand their 
children, and an effort on the part of youth to get the point 
of view of their elders would make for the betterment of 
human relations. The brother who is conservative theo¬ 
logically would receive spiritual help rather than damage 
if he would now and then spend an hour thinking as a 
liberal, and the modernist might find an effort to get the 
point of view of the fundamentalist a more spiritualiz¬ 
ing exercise than bemoaning his inhospitality to modern 


THE GRACE OF ADAPTABILITY 169 

thought. Something of an effort at mutual understanding 
might produce a spirit which would end many of the wars 
between capital and labor. In all fields of life the possession 
of the grace of adaptability makes for broader, kinder, richer 
associations between man and man. It is a distinctly Chris¬ 
tian virtue. 


THE INNER COMPULSION 


For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only 
use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh. 

Galatians V, 13. 

The Christians in the province of Galatia were going 
through the perilous experience of a transition from faith 
to faith. These early Christians had come from varied back¬ 
grounds. Some were saturated with the stoicism of ancient 
Greece with its emphasis upon self-control, and others, of 
the Hebrew lineage, were indoctrinated with a spirit of 
loyalty to the detailed prescriptions of the legalistic code of 
their fathers. Both of these groups, along with others, were 
now freed from the obligation to obey definite and compli¬ 
cated edicts handed down from other years. 

Christianity brought them freedom, but not all of them 
showed themselves capable of meeting their new responsi¬ 
bilities. They found it difficult to distinguish between lib¬ 
erty and moral anarchy. For example, the people of Thessa- 
lonica, believing that the end of the world was approaching, 
stopped working and became beggars. In Corinth the 
religious meetings degenerated into bedlams, with men and 
women screaming at the tops of their voices and saying 
nothing. In several of the churches unspeakable immorality 
occurred. The Hebrews especially had been accustomed to 
detailed directions as to matters of right and wrong. They 
had been fenced in by the law. Now when it was gone they 
ran wildly around, not knowing where to go or what to 
170 


THE INNER COMPULSION 171 

do. For this reason Paul warns the Galatian Christians not 
to use their liberty as an excuse for wrongdoing. 

A man with Paul’s knowledge and insight could have 
given them very specific instructions in regard to conduct 
of life. Such advice, however, would have been futile. It 
would ultimately have done more harm than good. The 
slavish following of handed-down edicts is incompatible 
with the spirit of Christianity. It is productive of a quib¬ 
bling, arid Pharisaism. A rich, winsome, full-orbed per¬ 
sonality can never be developed simply by punctilious obedi¬ 
ence to codes of conduct. The depending upon specific 
directions from others to decide our problems for us is the 
method of the lazy and the cowardly. At the outset it 
looks easy, but it absolutely will not work. Life is too big 
to be compressed into any set of rules. The formulator of 
ethical systems for others is likely to overstress matters of 
minor importance and to forget the weightier issues. 

Although Paul had been trained as a Pharisee, he was big 
enough to break the trammels of Pharisaism. He had the 
clarity of vision to see that the Kingdom of God could not 
be built upon servile obedience to him or anyone else. In 
specific instances he gave his friends and his children in the 
faith practical advice, but he went no farther. It was to 
the Galatians that he said: “ If ye are led by the spirit, ye 
are not under the law.” Naturally some of the members 
of the early churches interpreted this to mean that they 
had the privilege of unrestrained individualism. These the 
apostle warned that under liberty there was a higher stand¬ 
ard of righteousness than under the law. 

According to Paul’s teaching, right living resulted not 
from the application of external authority but from an inner 
compulsion. Taine, commenting upon finding the English 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


I 7 2 

so little given to stealing flowers from public parks, makes 
the following observation: “The aim of every society is 
that each should be his own policeman and require no 
other.” A society in which nobody did right except through 
fear of being punished for disobedience to the law would 
not be a desirable one in which to live. A religious organi¬ 
zation whose members attempted to regulate their lives 
according to some external code of rules would be far from 
the kingdom. It is also in the letter to the Galatians that 
Paul speaks of the law being a “ schoolmaster to bring us 
unto Christ.” He continues with the statement that “ after 
faith is come we are no longer under the schoolmaster.” In 
Paul’s teaching of an inner law above the time-honored 
Hebrew statutes he displayed a catholicity of thought and 
a breadth of vision miles above the conceptions of his land 
and generation. Dante grasped the same truth thirteen 
centuries later. In his Divine Comedy, as he comes into 
Paradise, Virgil says to him: “ Thine own pleasure take 
thou henceforward for guide; . . . Expect no more word 
or sign from me. Free, upright, and sound is thine own 
will, and it would be wrong not to act according to its 
choice; wherefore thee over thyself I crown and mitre.” 
He alone is free who can depend for direction upon the 
promptings of his own heart. 


THE PASSION FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS 


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after 
righteousness. 

Matthew V, 6 . 

The first significant word in this parable is “ blessed.” It 
has presented little trouble to translators. All modern ver¬ 
sions render it in the same way, and commentators explain 
that it signifies “ happy.” Yet this does not take us such 
a long distance. Happiness is a word covering a wide range 
o£ ideas. Spurgeon once said: “ The happiest state on earth 
is one in which we have something to do, strength to do it 
with, and a fair return for what we have done. This, with 
the divine blessing, is all that we ought to desire, and it is 
sufficient for any man who fears the Lord and abhors 
covetousness.” This shows a high conception of happi¬ 
ness, but there are lower levels. The drunkard can be 
made happy with ten cents worth of liquor. The egoist 
is happy when he is the envied center of the scene. The 
lazy man finds undiluted joy in “ day-long blessed idleness.” 
Heinrich Heine declared that the ideal state in life for him 
would be a modest, thatched-roofed cottage with a good 
bed, good fare, fresh milk and butter, and flowers by the 
window. But he also expressed a wish for a few fine trees 
before the door with six or seven of his enemies hanging 
upon them. This would cause his cup of bliss to be entirely 
full. Carlyle states: “ There is in man a higher than love 
of happiness; he can do without happiness and instead 
thereof find blessedness.” Undoubtedly there is an evasive 
173 


174 TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 

but definite distinction between the words. Blessedness is 
more a matter of the inner life. It is less dependent upon 
adventitious circumstances. It is an infinitely greater gift 
than transient joy. 

The next important words are “ hunger ” and “ thirst.” 
Both of these suggest intense desire. Most of us have never 
experienced the poignant pain of unsatisfied hunger, and 
we are told that thirst is even worse. These words in this 
setting mean little to us until we have grappled with the 
signification of the fourth, “ righteousness.” Moffatt trans¬ 
lates it “ goodness ” and Goodspeed “ uprightness.” Its 
meaning is easy to comprehend. Matthew Arnold has char¬ 
acterized it as “ the master-word of the Old Testament.” It 
is not hard to explain what is meant by the idea of hunger¬ 
ing and thirsting for righteousness, but we really do not 
grasp the implications of the thought unless we in our lives 
have this intense desire to avoid the wrong and do the right. 

Abraham Lincoln’s walking miles in order to return the 
six cents which he had overcharged a woman is a concrete 
evidence of an earnest desire to be completely honest. 
Grover Cleveland is quoted as saying near the end of his 
career as president, “ I have tried so hard to do right.” He 
who hungers and thirsts for righteousness will have a con¬ 
comitant fear of doing wrong. He will most earnestly en¬ 
deavor to refrain from evil, not on account of being afraid 
of punishment but rather because there is something within 
him which makes the very thought of wrongdoing repug¬ 
nant to his better self. I once overheard two men discussing 
a business transaction and one of them said: “ I would 
rather do something more than right than to run the risk 
of cheating the other fellow.” I did not know the man 
who uttered these words and cannot vouch for their sin- 


THE PASSION FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS 175 

cerity as I pass them along. I do know, however, that they 
give expression to the thought of a dominating desire to be 
honorable. 

We have long since learned that the religious life is some¬ 
thing more than obedience to a limited code of rules. The 
idea of a God of stern, relentless justice has given place to 
the thought of him as a loving father. These changes most 
certainly are not to be lamented. It is possible, nevertheless, 
that along with our ethical gains have come losses. As 
puritanism, with its strength and its weaknesses, receded 
farther into the background, a spirit of laxity developed. We 
have been not unlike children having “ a fling ” on finding 
themselves free from the discipline of an excessively strict 
home. One Sunday morning in the middle of the last 
century, the venerable pastor of the old “ Forks of the Bran¬ 
dywine Presbyterian Church” appeared before his congre¬ 
gation with one side of his face smooth and the other un¬ 
shaved. It was his custom to shave on Saturday night just 
before twelve o’clock. This time, however, the clock struck 
when he was about half through with the operation and 
under no circumstances would he break the Sabbath. We 
laugh at this as an example of the rigidity of our ancestors, 
while we go just as far in the opposite direction. Their 
puritanism has too frequently given place among us to a 
flippant bohemianism, which has little concern in regard 
to matters of right and wrong. A lack of moral passion is 
vitiating to any people. Those who hunger and thirst after 
righteousness are always among the blessed ones. 


AN INCLUSIVE PRAYER 


Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou 
me from secret faults. Keep bac\ thy servant also 
from presumptuous sins; let them not have do¬ 
minion over me. 

Psalms XIX, 12-13. 

In these words the psalmist makes a distinction which 
shows subtlety, insight and grasp of cardinal principles. He 
prays to be cleansed from two kinds of sin. The first he 
calls “ secret faults,” or as Moffatt translates the verse “ faults 
unknown.” By this he means not merely sins concealed 
from our associates but those of which we ourselves are not 
conscious. 

We see faults in others of which they are themselves ig¬ 
norant. In this light it is safe to assume that we possess 
uncommendable characteristics without knowing it. Burns’s 
frequently quoted lines have a universal applicability; 

O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as others see us! 

It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 

And foolish notion. 

We live with ourselves. Consequently our own limitations 
become so familiar that we do not notice them. Other ele¬ 
ments enter in. Everybody is decidedly anxious to retain 
his own self-respect. This tendency frequently interferes 
with honesty in self-analysis. In spite of the fact that our 
ultra-modern psychology has in many ways gone to silly 
176 


AN INCLUSIVE PRAYER 


*77 

extremes, it has taught that in much o£ our study of the 
human mind we have simply skimmed the surface, that 
factors of which we have never dreamed are playing a part 
in each day’s life. We are now convinced that the science 
of self-knowledge is a field which we have hardly begun 
to explore. No man understands himself. There are sins 
in his life of which he is completely unconscious. These 
are weakening him morally through the years and some 
time they will bring him to open disaster. Not only should 
a person pray to be delivered from his secret faults, but he 
should do his utmost to discover them and eradicate them. 
Too often we are in ignorance of our defects because we 
have made no effort to discover them. 

In Moffatt’s translation the second type of sin is referred 
to as “ wilful sin.” From the point of logic it would seem 
that if a person knew that a certain deed was sinful and 
at the same time realized the consequences of such wrong¬ 
doing, he would do his utmost to avoid it. But logic is not 
the strongest factor in the determining of man’s course of 
action. Shakespeare, who saw into the hidden springs of 
life as deeply as any man who ever lived, realized this. At 
the beginning of his career of bloody crime Macbeth weighs 
the issues and thus philosophizes: 

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well 

If it were done quickly: . 

. But in these cases 

We still have judgment here; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which being taught return 
To plague the inventor; this even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned-chalice 
To our own lips . 





TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


178 

Then follow the personal arguments as to why he should 
murder Duncan. Yet he commits the crime. In his reason¬ 
ing one way and acting the other Macbeth was not unusual. 
Many a Faust has deliberately sold his soul to the forces of 
darkness. If knowing what is wrong always meant refrain¬ 
ing from doing it, what a different world we would be 
living in! 

The first prayer is for cleansing; the second for restraint. 
“ And hold thy servant back from wilful sins.” In this part 
of the prayer the psalmist shows the same keen acumen as 
in the first. He realizes that in man seethe secret sins sap¬ 
ping his principles, corroding his soul and rotting his charac¬ 
ter. He also knows of his proneness to rush madly in the 
wrong direction. Therefore he prays to be held back in 
those hours when he tends to yield consciously to tempta¬ 
tion. He further asks that he may be kept upright and free 
from transgression. No man can do this without the help 
of the restraining power of God. 


THE PARABLE OF THE SWINDLING MANAGER 


And the lord commended the unjust steward be - 
cause he had done wisely: for the children of this 
world are in their generation wiser than the chil¬ 
dren of light. 

Luke XVI, 8 . 

Although there have been many controversies in regard to 
the interpretation of this parable, the story itself is relatively 
clear. A certain rich man had put his property in charge 
of a manager who apparently had a free hand in the ad¬ 
ministration of the estate. Word eventually came to the 
owner that the agent was defrauding him. Therefore he 
demanded an accounting and informed the steward that 
when matters had been settled his term of service would 
end. The agent who had not saved anything was worried. 
He was not able to do manual work and was too proud to 
beg. Then he hit upon a plan to provide for himself. He 
made a proposition to several of his employer’s creditors 
that he would remit part of the obligation of each. The 
man who owed a hundred measures of oil was required to 
pay but fifty. The one whose debt was a hundred measures 
of wheat was given a rebate of twenty. The idea of the 
manager was that by making friends of these debtors they 
would be so grateful that they would take him into their 
homes. It is not impossible that there was a definite under¬ 
standing. The employer heard of what this shrewd rascal 
was doing and in spite of the fact that he was being de- 
179 


i8o 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


frauded could not help admiring the cunning of the em¬ 
bezzler. Even Jesus sees in this dishonest manager certain 
qualities which his followers might well imitate. 

Here the question always arises, “ Why did this master 
commend the man who defrauded him? ” And a more 
important query follows in its wake, “ Why does Jesus use 
this scamp to teach a lesson? ” It has even been intimated 
that, in pointing out this thief as an example, Jesus is 
palliating dishonesty. Julian, the Apostate, made much of 
this as early as the fourth century. Some commentators in 
order to free Jesus from the odium of teaching such a moral¬ 
ity have twisted the parable into various fantastic meanings. 
Most of the troubles in connection with the interpretation 
of this passage come from a wrong method of studying the 
parables. There is a big difference between a parable and 
an allegory. To engage in the unraveling of finespun analo¬ 
gies in regard to this parable would confuse rather than 
elucidate. Parables must not be overworked. Jesus, who 
was a real teacher, used them to bring out one big central 
thought rather than a dozen or two petty quibbles. This 
parable, like all others, should be studied with a telescope 
rather than a microscope. 

Not for one moment would Jesus commend the rascality 
of the man. To deny that he was a scamp is to beat about 
the bush and to close our eyes to plain facts. The life of a 
scoundrel as well as that of a saint can teach us lessons. A 
man whose general attitude toward life cannot be defended 
may have some admirable qualities. This dishonest man¬ 
ager had a problem to face. He did not shilly-shally but 
faced it frankly with foresight, resourcefulness and zeal. 
The central thought which Jesus brings out is that in con¬ 
fronting the facts of life “the children of light” need to 


THE PARABLE OF THE SWINDLING MANAGER l8l 

utilize some of the same qualities which this steward mani¬ 
fested in the solving of his problem. 

Most emphatically the Christian needs the ability to look 
disagreeable truths straight in the face. He needs to be 
resourceful. If an unfavorable situation confronts him, it is 
his responsibility to find some way to meet it. Zeal is a 
commendable quality which is needed just as much by “ the 
children of light ” as it is in the market-place. Whatever 
the faults of this “ prudent steward,” as Dr. W. M. Taylor 
used to call him, he was neither stupid nor inefficient. In¬ 
sight, foresight and efficiency are not incompatible with 
piety. Stupidity and laziness are not the hallmarks of a 
saint. The man in the parable was not spiritually minded. 
Worse than this, he lacked common honesty. He was, how¬ 
ever, alert to his opportunities. If the disciples of Jesus, 
along with their higher ethical principles, would show the 
same degree of capability in the affairs of his kingdom, its 
rate of progress would be many times multiplied. 


MAKING A GOOD RECORD 


Four things a man must learn to do, 

If he would make his record true: 

To thin\ without confusion clearly; 

To love his fellow men sincerely; 

To act from honest motives purely; 

To trust in God and heaven securely. 

Henry van Dyke 

The ability “ to think without confusion ” is a prime requi¬ 
site for any real achievement. The great tragedies of history 
can be traced to muddy thinking. The World War with its 
10,000,000 known dead soldiers, its 3,000,000 supposed dead 
soldiers, its 13,000,000 dead civilians, its 20,000,000 wounded, 
its destruction of the fruits of generations of labor and sacri¬ 
fice, its turning back of the clock of civilization, and its 
calling forth once more the buried savagery of the primitive 
man, was primarily the result of wrong thinking. False 
economic thinking has brought us into the welter of prob¬ 
lems from which we are so desperately trying to extricate 
ourselves. There is no great social wrong that does not have 
behind it a background of erroneous doctrine. 

The rearranging of prejudices is invariably a poor substi¬ 
tute for hard, clean-cut, definite thinking. Today no one can 
walk along the streets of any American city without being 
impressed with the fact that the repeal has by no means 
solved the problems having to do with the sale and con¬ 
sumption of intoxicants. Prohibition came far from ac¬ 
complishing all that its protagonists hoped that it would do, 
182 


MAKING A GOOD RECORD 1 83 

but now the more glaring failure of repeal stares us in the 
face. It brings in its wake questions which cannot be settled 
by any mirage of overheated language. Some of its aspects 
need to be thought through with much more care than has 
been given to them by many well-intentioned men and 
women laudably anxious to eliminate a social evil from our 
national life. The extension of economic justice, the eradi¬ 
cation of racial bigotry, and the broadening of international 
sympathies are all results which can be attained only by 
means of more thinking and clearer thinking. 

There is a most palpable lack in the higher life of him 
who has not learned “ to love his fellow men sincerely.” In 
spite of the vast amount of cant which has been uttered in 
regard to man’s duty to love men, the fact remains that 
loyalty to the law of love is the barometer of an individual’s 
attitude toward the world. Charles Sumner as a statesman 
was a militant humanitarian, yet he told Julia Ward Howe 
that he had lost interest in individuals. Mrs. Howe tardy 
recorded in her diary her belief that “ God almighty had not 
yet got that far.” Carlyle spoke of the population of Great 
Britain as “ Forty millions mostly fools.” However, along 
with this detestation of humanity in general, he loved hu¬ 
man beings, and his acts of personal benevolence evidenced 
his compassion for individual sufferers. Emerson, on the 
other hand, said: “ I love man, but I hate men.” Possibly 
neither of these attitudes is ideal, and neither man yielded 
entirely to his particular type of revulsion. The sincere love 
of one’s fellow men means a far-reaching humanitarianism 
and an appreciation of individuals. Both are a long dis¬ 
tance from the callousness which today is expressing itself 
by captious sneers at the government’s policy of preventing 
the unemployed and their families from starving by what 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


184 

is essentially a dole. Help of this kind has always been 
abused by some, but to take the position that the American 
people should stand by and allow its needy men, women and 
children to starve is a distinctly un-Christian attitude. Love 
of humanity is genuine only when it is concretely applied. 

One of the hardest things for a person to do is to act con¬ 
sistently from honest motives. To be honest with oneself 
is more difficult than to be honest with others. Although 
numerous examples of our weaknesses and mistakes make 
their appearance, we hate to think of ourselves as being in 
the wrong. Consequently, we spend much time and energy 
in self-justification. The real reasons for our beliefs and 
actions frequently lie much farther below the surface of our 
lives than those which we believe are responsible for our 
following a given course. James Harvey Robinson tells us 
that “ thousands of argumentative works have been written 
to vent a grudge.” Milton wrote his treatise on divorce 
when his seventeen-year-old wife left his home, and when 
he was accused of being a radical he wrote his Areopagitica 
in defense of his right to say what he believed. 

Self-justification is a dangerous performance. If a person 
deludes himself into thinking he is right when he is wrong, 
he loses his power of discrimination. He becomes morally 
cross-eyed. Certain psychologists, who are more popular 
than scientific, say: “Never acknowledge failure. Affirm 
success. Think in terms of success. Assert that you are im¬ 
proving whether you are or not.” Such falsification even¬ 
tually so disintegrates the mind of a man that an honest 
motive becomes an utter impossibility. 

And how much it means “ to trust in God and heaven se¬ 
curely,” to feel that “ the eternal God is our refuge and be¬ 
neath us are the everlasting arms ”! Voltaire said, “ If there 


MAKING A GOOD RECORD 


185 

were no God it would be necessary to invent him.” Sooner 
or later all of us learn that we are frail. Before we travel very 
far along the road of experience, we find there is no security 
against the ills of life. Our days upon earth go swifter than 
a weaver’s shuttle. Man does not have absolute control over 
his own destiny. Our scope is limited by the evanescent. 
The sense of the eternal for which we long comes only 
from the divine. Within us there is implanted that which 
causes us to seek the throne of God, and there we can have 
spiritual communion with one whom we can call “ Father.” 
We can: 

Tell him about the heartache, 

And tell him about the longings, too. 

Tell him the baffled purpose 
When we scarce know what to do. 

Then leaving all our weakness 
With the one divinely strong, 

Forget that we bore a burden 
And carry away a song. 

This type of trust has built up and strengthened many a 
tempest-tossed wayfarer. 


TWO SOURCES OF STRENGTH 


In quietness and confidence shall be your strength . 

Isaiah XXX, 15. 

Quietness restores depleted vitality and builds up a resistive 
power. In the normal life it is not a luxury but a necessity. 
Yet it is by no means easy to secure in the modern world. 
In describing Mid-Victorian London Ruskin spoke of the 
city as “ rattling, growling and roaring.” To do justice to 
the chaos of discord of the city of today many times three 
adjectives would be needed, and the peace of the once quiet 
countryside is broken by the purr of the motor and the 
raucous laughter of the urban vulgarian. We are continu¬ 
ously immersed in what Walter Lippmann has character¬ 
ized as a “ bath of noise.” We have become so accustomed 
to it that many of us feel lost without it. If we accidentally 
find ourselves away from the incessant blare of our mecha¬ 
nized civilization, we apply to our environment the over¬ 
worked adjective, “ dead.” Repeated experiments have 
demonstrated that the constant exposure to noise is debili¬ 
tating. It detracts from vitality and shortens life. The 
tranquil meditation characteristic of an earlier day is be¬ 
coming more and more of an impossibility. 

If quietness is a source of strength and our lives lack it, 
the consequences are certain to be detrimental. No deep in¬ 
sight into the eternal truths is ever developed in the crash 
and roar of the hastening crowd. A newspaper man can 
hammer out a report of a murder trial with dozens rushing 
and chattering around him, but Wordsworth could not have 
186 


TWO SOURCES OF STRENGTH 187 

produced his “ Tintern Abbey ” or his “ Ode on Intimations 
of Immortality” save in the fastness of his beloved lake- 
begemmed hills. A reader does not have to spend much 
time over any book or article in order to find whether it 
was dashed off by some facile-minded journalist to meet an 
immediate need or whether it is the fruit of long hours of 
quiet brooding and grappling with the age-long mysteries. 
When the Hebrew poet uttered the impressively beautiful 
words, “ Be still and know that I am God,” he was giving 
expression to a thought which this noisy, hasting, shallow, 
materialized generation needs constantly to remember. 

The other source of power which the prophet mentions is 
confidence. There is a close relation between the two. 
Quietness is not likely to exist without confidence. The 
blustering, factious, self-promoting person lacks the quiet 
spirit. His basic difficulty in most instances is that he is 
without confidence. I once heard a wise college official of 
many years experience characterizing a beginning teacher, 
who was frothing at the mouth, pawing the air and tearing 
up the earth in a futile effort to make himself prominent, 
as “ a man too weak and badly balanced to wait for the re¬ 
sults which come from honest work well done.” The con¬ 
fident man naturally avoids fluttering around in an inconse¬ 
quential effort to attract attention. 

Carlyle, in words of corrosive eloquence, describes an 
ignoble type of humanity as follows: “ Examine the man 
who lives in misery because he does not shine above other 
men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious 
about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, 
as it were, begging everybody for God’s sake to acknowledge 
him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such 
a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this 


i88 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


sun. A great man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; 
fitter for the ward of a hospital than for a throne among 
men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk 
on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, 
write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the emp¬ 
tiness of the man, not his greatness.” 

This scathing and penetrating analysis of a warped soul 
which lacks both quietness and confidence and is, there¬ 
fore, intrinsically weak goes to the root of the matter. 
Down below the surface is a consciousness of emptiness and 
futility, of the absence of genuine worth. The fussy, flurried, 
pushing character is such because it lacks the ballast of self- 
confidence. It never enjoys what it has; it is always fuming 
over the deprivation of something to which it is not entitled. 
In this kind of life there is no mountain peak of silence. 

The Old Testament message that in quietness and confi¬ 
dence there is strength is reiterated in the New Testament. 
Jesus lived, during the years of his ministry, a life of excep¬ 
tional activity. He traveled on foot from one end of the 
land to the other. He performed miracles upon thousands. 
He talked to great crowds. But in the midst of these full 
years he sought the reviving power of quietness in the 
lonely mountain and by the solitary shore of the sea. In 
him is the help that we need as we seek for that confidence 
and quietness which bring strength into faltering lives. 
Man can know that assurance upon which serenity is 
builded if he continually draws upon the infinite power of 
God. 

We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power, 

Why therefore should we do ourselves this wrong 
Of others — that we are not always strong, 


TWO SOURCES OF STRENGTH 


That we are ever overborne with care, 

That we should ever weak or heartless be, 

Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 

And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee? 


THE TWELVE 


And he called unto him his twelve disciples. 

Matthew X, i. 

One of the surest ways to gain an insight into the opinions, 
character, personality and ideals of a leader is to study the 
types of men whom he selects to work with him. The 
twelve disciples of Jesus are an interesting aggregation of 
humanity. The first six chosen were Peter, Andrew, James, 
John, Philip and Bartholomew. Of these Peter was the 
most prominent. He was impulsive, well-meaning, im¬ 
aginative and active. His life was one of ups and downs, 
but ultimately he became the “rock.” James and John, 
“ the sons of thunder,” have been respectively characterized 
as “ the man of silence ” and “ the man of temper.” After 
Peter, John was the outstanding figure among the twelve. 
Andrew did not have the gift of personal conspicuousness 
but he had the capacity of making quick decisions and put¬ 
ting them into practice. We know so little of Bartholomew 
and James the son of Alpheus that any discussion of them 
is so much a matter of inference that it is useless. Philip was 
a man of high appreciation of Jesus as a religious teacher 
but not especially effective in applying his teachings. 

Thomas was a man of exceptional caution, anxious to 
avoid mistakes. He is quoted but three times and all of his 
remarks are tinged with pessimism. The selection of Mat¬ 
thew, the tax-gatherer for Rome, defied popular prejudice. 
Jesus must have had confidence in the man to justify his 
taking what looked to be a decided risk. Another obscure 


THE TWELVE 


I 9 I 

figure is Thaddeus. Matthew and Mark refer to him, but in 
his place Luke has “ Judas, the son of James.” Simon, the 
Canaanite, was a foreigner. He is called “ the Zealot ” by 
Luke. He may have been one of the group which twenty 
years before had taken part in a revolt against Rome. At the 
bottom of the list stands Judas Iscariot. His tragic figure 
has always been somewhat of a puzzle to students. Once 
he may have been loyal and attractive. Later we know that 
he was mercenary. That he experienced so much remorse 
that he could not endure life after he had betrayed his Mas¬ 
ter is to be remembered to his credit. 

As we study this group together the outstanding impres¬ 
sion which they make upon us is that they are representative 
of many walks of life, points of view and types of person¬ 
ality. This undoubtedly was one of the sources of their 
strength. The pessimistic, super-cautious Thomas was 
needed to keep the balance in a company containing the 
buoyant, optimistic Peter. As Matthew was a business man 
it is highly probable that he saw matters in a different light 
than did Simon, the Canaanite radical. A few men of quiet 
spirit were likely desirable in a band containing two ambi¬ 
tious “ sons of thunder.” 

The variety of personalities among the disciples reflects 
the broad tolerance of Jesus. A leader lacking this would 
have had cut-and-dried ideas as to the type which he needed 
and would have allowed no deviation from it. Each of 
these men had his merit and each his limitation. Human 
beings are more nearly equal than we are inclined to think. 
Pre-eminent genius in one field frequently is balanced by 
incapacity in another. It is not fair to blame a person who 
is doing competent work in the department in which he is 
skilled because he cannot do everything else as well. It takes 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


I92 

different people with varying aptitudes to do the work of 
the world. A leader with sufficient catholicity of sympathy 
to gather a corps of divergent personalities around him is 
going to exert an influence that one of less tolerant spirit 
could not come within thousands of miles of exercising. 

In the days when the philosophy department of Harvard 
contained such giants as Royce, Miinsterberg, Palmer and 
James it laid especial stress upon possessing a faculty which 
presented the different schools of philosophical thought 
characteristic of the period. A spirit like this on the part of 
ecclesiastical leaders would have prevented many a profitless 
struggle over matters of opinion. It is needed today. There 
always will be men of a temperament which reaches out 
after new truth, and it is just as certain that the church will 
never lack those who move with the utmost caution and are 
somewhat fearful that in the ever changing currents of life 
something of irreplaceable value will be lost. The problem 
is not to get both groups to think alike. This absolutely 
cannot be done. What is needed is the sense and grace to 
think and let think. The church needs different thought 
emphases. The boundaries of God’s Kingdom are wide. It 
has within it room for multitudinous types of spiritually as¬ 
piring men. # 


THE HIGHER LAW OF SERVICE 


By love serve one another. 

Galatians V, 13. 

Thirty years ago if a preacher came to deliver a sermon 
upon some collegiate occasion the chances were about even 
that his theme would be “ Service.” The student who at¬ 
tended the meetings of the Y.M.C.A. could count on hear¬ 
ing a speaker discuss this subject about once a month, and 
few were the religious gatherings in which the word was 
not frequently used. This emphasis of a vital Christian 
truth was not without its fruit. It would be impossible to 
estimate the kindly deeds and the sacrificial lives which 
have resulted from such teachings. As I look back upon 
some of these addresses, however, they impress me as being 
rather facile and rhetorical. Each generation has its own 
cliches and in some instances speakers discussed “ service ” 
because it was the most appealing platform theme to an 
audience of that day. One picturesque address from a visit¬ 
ing dignitary made a powerful impression upon some of us, 
but later I had incontrovertible evidence that its maker was 
the very personification of self-seeking ecclesiasticism, with¬ 
out an ounce of unselfishness in his two-hundred-pound 
body. 

No generation, however, can be allowed to forget that in 
this thought of service, overstressed and warped as it was in 
those days, we come very near to the heart of Christian 
teaching. “ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these 
my brethren ye have done it unto me.” The other day, 
193 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


*94 

leafing through the history of a sturdy Scotch-Irish family 
which over two hundred years ago came from County 
Donegal to Pennsylvania, I found a brief biographical 
sketch which has come into my mind again and again since 
I read it. Although we are told that its subject was a ruling 
elder of the church of his fathers for thirty-four years, that is 
not what impressed me. Ruling elders are very numerous 
in this particular little book. When the genealogist came 
to the mention of one John Andrew Parke he interrupted 
his list of names to say: “ He was universally respected and 
loved by the people among whom he resided. He filled 
many positions of trust. The poor man in need of a bonds¬ 
man hunted up John Andrew Parke. Many a dollar he lost 
in this sort of work, but he persisted to the close of his life 
in helping the poor. He could not refuse their appeal. He 
denied himself many of the ordinary comforts of life to do 
a kindly turn to others. Descended from a long line of care¬ 
ful, thrifty farmers, the phenomenal change to his life of 
pure beneficence is surprisingly great.” It is easy to find 
eulogies in family histories — and elsewhere, but there is 
something grippingly convincing in this tribute to a plain, 
obscure Pennsylvania farmer, obviously coming from the 
pen of one who knew him. Somewhere, in his home or in 
the little country church planted by the roadside by his first 
American ancestor, this man had grasped the real principle 
of Christian living. 

There is a little rhyme which tells us that all this world 
needs is the art of being kind. It seems almost cruel to take 
issue with a statement apparently so impeccable, but some¬ 
thing more is needed than a gracious person-to-person 
kindness. A turkey given to an employee at Christmas is a 
poor substitute for a living wage and decent working con- 


THE HIGHER LAW OF SERVICE 


*95 

ditions. Gifts to philanthropy do not excuse the ruthless 
crowding out of competitors or selling articles for exorbitant 
prices. Donations to ecclesiastical and educational enter¬ 
prises can never take the taint from a fortune acquired by 
foisting a worthless patent medicine upon the gullible pub¬ 
lic at an enormously unethical profit. The handing out of a 
few gifts is no justification for the exploitation of humanity. 

But the abuse of service is no reason for neglecting its use. 
There is a sermon for each of us in the beautiful words of 
Dr. Marcus Dods: “No disciple of Christ need go far to 
find feet that need washing, feet that are stained or bleeding 
with the hard ways that have been trodden. To recover 
men from difficulties into which sin or misfortune has 
brought them — to wipe off some of the soils from men’s 
lives — to make them purer, sweeter, readier to listen to 
Christ, even unostentatiously to do the small service which 
each hour calls for — is to follow him who girt himself with 
the slave’s apron.” 


BLIND GUIDES 


Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow 
a camel. 

Matthew XXIII, 24. 

Jesus called the Pharisees “blind guides” because they 
lacked the proper perspective. Their vision was so dis¬ 
torted that they could not distinguish between the impor¬ 
tant and the inconsequential. Matthew XXIII is one of the 
outstanding passages in all literature. Nowhere do we find 
a more scathing denunciation of contemptible characteris¬ 
tics. Demosthenes in his Philippics, Cicero in his denun¬ 
ciations of Catiline, Burke in his blistering indictment of 
Warren Hastings never uttered words more penetrating, 
eloquent and devastating than this excoriation of Pharisaic 
shallowness, hypocrisy and bigotry. It is not, however, to be 
studied as an abuse of personalities. Jesus did not indulge 
in the hurling of billingsgate at his fellow men. His indig¬ 
nation was directed against traits rather than human beings. 
The weakness and the essential wickedness of the Pharisees 
are relentlessly set before them. They were inhospitable to 
new truth. They gave externals pre-eminence over the inner 
life. They made long prayers in the synagogues and at the 
same time robbed widows and orphans of their inheritance. 
As we read these blazing, dynamitic, rifle-crack sentences 
we notice that Jesus repeatedly rebuked them for their 
deliberate refusal to see things as they really were. 

Not the least among their derelictions was their regard¬ 
ing tithing of herbs and birdseed as more important than 
196 


BLIND GUIDES 


197 

the practice of justice, mercy and truth. With them re¬ 
ligion had been reduced to a matter of obeying rules. The 
letter of the law was placed above everything else. One 
rabbi taught: “ He who in walking repeats the law to him¬ 
self but interrupts himself and exclaims, ‘ How beautiful 
is that tree! How beautiful is this field! ’ the Scripture will 
impute it to him as though he had forfeited his life.” Some 
of the men who were responsible for the death of Jesus 
would not have stepped into a Gentile courtroom, yet they 
were ready to instigate a murder. There are other mani¬ 
festations of this legalism in Hebrew thought. Ezekiel 
says: “If a man be just, and do that which is lawful and 
right, and hath not eaten upon the mountains, . . . neither 
hath defiled his neighbor’s wife . . . and hath not wronged 
any, but hath restored to the debtor his pledge, hath spoiled 
none by violence, by robbery, hath given his bread to the 
hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment; . . . 
he is just, he shall surely live.” The blot upon this truly 
noble passage is that the prophet places the violation of the 
edict of eating upon the mountains on the same level as 
adultery and robbery. Stressing matters of minor impor¬ 
tance for a long time atrophies the power of discrimination. 

The tendency to make errors of this kind is not confined 
to religion alone. In Robert Frost’s poem, “ Mending 
Wall,” two neighbors spend a day walking along the wall 
between their farms replacing the stones that have fallen 
during the winter. One of them suggests that their occu¬ 
pation is utterly useless as there would be no danger of the 
pine on the one farm trespassing on the apple trees of the 
other. This suggestion does not appeal to the neighbor. 
He quotes his father’s saying, “ Good fences make good 
neighbors,” and will go no further. Consequently, every 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


I98 

year the two men labor to keep intact a worthless wall. The 
elimination of futile routine would to a surprising degree 
decrease the cost of American education and at the same 
time enhance its efficiency. Most of us in the management 
of our personal problems spend time, money and energy 
upon matters of little or no consequence. Jesus rebuked 
Martha, the over-precise housekeeper, for inability to see 
that Mary had “chosen the better part.” Some of our 
greatest worries have to do with that which is of no 
consequence. 

The carrying of this trait into the realm of morals and 
religion is suicidal to the higher life. It is productive of 
perverted standards of ethics. Walter Rauschenbusch tells 
of a Mennonite farmer who shipped milk to Toronto re¬ 
ceiving his cans back marked with a red label, indicating 
that the milk had been poured out because it was dirty. 
Upon seeing the scarlet mark on his can, this brother forgot 
the vows of his sect and swore “ an unscriptural oath.” 
As a result of this incident he was brought before his 
church, given a hearing, found guilty and excommunicated. 
The major sin in the eyes of his ecclesiastical clansmen was 
not the endangering of human life through the selling of 
dirty milk. This was a matter of no concern to them. The 
moral breach for which he was tried was “ the unscriptural 
oath.” 

Volumes could be filled with instances of an inability 
upon the part of genuinely well-intentioned men and women 
to see religious and moral issues in the right perspective. If 
there had been no confusing of the fundamental and the 
non-essential, some of the most tragic chapters in the history 
of the Christian church would never have been written. 
The multiplicity of denominations would not be the des- 


BLIND GUIDES 


199 

perate problem which it is if all men had the power of 
making correct differentiations. Intellectual blindness is a 
serious matter. To be blind morally is even more calami¬ 
tous. Very often the two are exactly the same. Jesus 
blamed the men of his day who could not distinguish be¬ 
tween the size of a gnat and that of a camel. Have we any 
reason whatever to believe that he expects less of us ? 


THE PRE-EMINENCE OF HUMAN VALUES 


How much then is a man 


better than a sheep? 
Matthew XII, T 2. 


This question implies an answer rather than demands one. 
In it Jesus asserts the irrefragible truth that human values 
are supreme. His disciples as they had walked across a 
field had plucked some heads of grain, shelled them with 
their hands and eaten the seeds. The Pharisees had objected 
to this, not because it was any violation of property right, 
as this method of helping oneself was generally accepted in 
the Orient, but rather on account of their regarding the ac¬ 
tion of the disciples as a breaking of the law forbidding 
physical labor on the Sabbath. Later on the same day Jesus 
was about to heal a man with a withered hand. Again the 
Pharisees were ready with their quibbling question, “ Is it 
lawful to heal on the Sabbath? ” Jesus called their attention 
to the fact that if any of them should have a sheep fall into 
a pit on the Sabbath he would rescue it. Then he said, 
“ How much then is a man better than a sheep ? ” and told 
the man to stretch forth his hand that he might be healed. 

Here Jesus was dealing with a concrete issue, but he 
enunciated the far-reaching principle that human beings are 
worth more than property. In that pastoral land where 
flocks innumerable grazed upon the hillsides it is possible 
that there was to be found here and there an owner of many 
flocks who valued them more highly than he rated his fel¬ 
low men. This has happened many a time since. In his 
lecture, “ The Last Days of the Confederacy,” General John 
B. Gordon described the feelings of the half-starved, battle- 


200 


THE PRE-EMINENCE OF HUMAN VALUES 


201 


worn legions in gray as they passed from the war-devas¬ 
tated South into the region around Gettysburg with its rich, 
well-stocked farms with their fine stone houses and big 
red barns bursting with plenty. He especially mentions his 
men noticing the sleek, broad-backed horses of the Pennsyl¬ 
vania farmers and confesses that some of them found their 
way into the possession of the Confederates. One farmer 
who came to ask for the return of his horse made an espe¬ 
cially impressive plea to General Gordon, telling him that 
he had been married three times and cared more about that 
horse than he did for any of his wives. The incident is 
more than a good story. Most of us who have lived in 
rural regions can call to mind farmers who took surpas¬ 
singly better care of their livestock than they did of their 
families. Examples are still to be found here and there of 
comfortable, well-equipped barns standing in communities 
where the schoolhouses and churches are flimsy structures 
unfit for kennels or pigpens. Sections in which such condi¬ 
tions prevail have not yet learned that human life is worth 
infinitely more than sheep or cattle. 

Wealth in the days of Jesus consisted especially of flocks 
and herds. Just what constitutes it now is hard to say, 
when so many assets have become liabilities. We do know, 
however, that Jesus teaches that human values should be 
placed above houses, stocks and bonds, and the mechanical 
productions of an inventive age. One of the most frequently 
used arguments of the automobile salesman is, “ A man of 
your standing ought not to drive a cheap car,” the implica¬ 
tion being that a man is judged not by his own worth but 
by the price of his car. It may be that this is the criterion 
of some, but it is essentially a heathen standard. 

One hundred years ago the average person had 72 wants 


202 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


of which 16 were necessities. Today he has 484 of which 
94 are regarded as necessities. A hundred years ago the 
number of items urged upon the average person was 200; 
now it is 32,000. If we take into account different makes of 
the same machine, we are now offered 365,000 items. Is this 
in itself a sign of progress? Is the fact that we use electric 
lights today rather than tallow-candles or kerosene lamps 
incontrovertible evidence that we have advanced? 

When England was boasting of connecting every town 
with every other town by means of railroads, John Rus- 
kin sardonically remarked: “You Enterprised a Railroad 
through the valley — you blasted rocks away, heaped thou¬ 
sands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is 
gone, and the gods with it; and now every fool in Buxton 
can be at Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in Bake- 
well at Buxton: which you think a lucrative process of ex¬ 
change— you Fools Everywhere.” Ruskin’s anathemas at 
the achievements of inventions were not always well 
balanced, but the thing which he saw with the utmost clar¬ 
ity was that the man’s improvement in tolerance, in insight 
and spirituality is the yardstick by which progress is to be 
measured. To the extent to which the comforts produced 
by mechanical civilization add to the richness of man’s spir¬ 
itual life, they are of value. Kipling’s “ auld Fleet Engineer 
M’Andrew” had his doubts about it: 

We’re creepin’ with each new rig, less weight and larger 
power; 

There’ll be the loco-boiler next and thirty knots an hour! 
Thirty and more; but what I hae seen since ocean steam 
began 

Leaves me nae doot for the machine, but what about the 
man? 


THE PRE-EMINENCE OF HUMAN VALUES 


203 


What about the man? That’s the question! Man is in¬ 
finitely more precious than anything else in the world. The 
dignity and value of humanity is a New Testament teaching 
which would be hard to gainsay. It is a doctrine which 
must be applied in facing the issues of modern life. 


WRONG BALANCES AND SHORT WEIGHTS 


Shall I count them pure with the wic\ed balances, 
and with the bag of deceitful weights? 

Micah VI, ii. 

Micah was a rural prophet. His home was upon the rich 
plain o£ Moresheth to the southwest of Jerusalem. At this 
time these country people were living under exceedingly 
adverse conditions. In time of war Jerusalem was protected 
by its wall, but the rural regions were devastated by sword 
and lire. Even in times of peace the residents of the out¬ 
lying sections had a hard road to travel. Much of the land 
was owned by landlords, who lived in Jerusalem upon the 
fruits of the toil of those who tilled their acres. Through 
extortion and tyranny the city mulcted the countryside. 
The spirit of rebellion against this exploitation is very dis¬ 
tinctly reflected in the eloquent fragmentary lines of Micah. 
Isaiah loved Jerusalem; Micah hated it. To him its name 
meant greed, dishonesty, selfish luxury and swollen for¬ 
tunes acquired by oppression and extortion. 

One of his quarrels with the city is the prevalence of the 
crassest type of petty cheating by means of dishonest bal¬ 
ances and false weights. Although such chicanery was es¬ 
pecially prevalent in the East, it has not been confined to 
any one geographical section or period of time. Washing¬ 
ton Irving tells of the defrauding of the Indians by the 
Dutch traders by means of a highly peculiar method of bal¬ 
ancing. If the Indian brought in a small bundle of furs, 
the Dutchman would balance the scales with his hands. If 


204 


WRONG BALANCES AND SHORT WEIGHTS 2C>5 

the bundle was larger, he used his foot. The bewildered 
copper-colored children of the sun could not understand 
why it was that they never could manage to get together a 
bundle of furs heavier than a Dutchman’s foot. In coun¬ 
tries where modern business methods prevail, these crude 
methods of perpetuating frauds have been to a large degree 
eliminated. Reasonably well enforced laws make them dif¬ 
ficult but not impossible. Short weight in bread is esti¬ 
mated by authorities to cost the consumer in the United 
States $100,000,000 annually. There are other evidences that 
what George Adam Smith calls “ the sin of the scant meas¬ 
ure ” has not disappeared from the commercial activities of 
man. In 1931 Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink published a 
volume entitled Your Money's Worth, its subtitle being “ A 
Study in the Waste of the Consumer’s Dollar.” It is a book 
of facts. Here are just a few of them. A certain liquid soap 
is sold for as high as fi a gallon, but in Chicago the 
Y.M.C.A. makes its own —a better quality —for 11 cents 
a gallon. The government buys typewriter ribbons meeting 
exacting tests for $1.67 per dozen. A dozen of the same type 
of ribbon costs the'general consumer from $8 to $10. Im¬ 
ported electric irons, which at landing cost 77 cents, are sold 
at retail for $5.50 and $6.50. A remedy for sore eyes, which 
contains material worth about five cents a gallon, is retailed 
at $16 a pint. Cotton has been sold under many names as 
silk and linen, the fur of the white rabbit as ermine, shoddy 
as wool and steel as silver. 

Micah’s protest against the dishonesty in business of his 
day has to do with an inclusive principle. “ Every trade has 
its tricks,” “In business it is the survival of the fittest,” 
“ We are not running a Sunday school.” Such aphorisms, 
showing an absolute defiance of the simple standards of 


20 6 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


honesty, are heard almost daily. The idea that all is fair in 
competition has been the cause of much deviation from the 
laws of sound ethics. David Harum’s motto, “ Do the other 
fellow before he does you” was quoted long after people 
had ceased to read the book. It was frequently rolled as a 
sweet morsel under the tongue because it expressed the 
philosophy of multitudes of Americans. 

The pressure of a highly competitive civilization, of a rap¬ 
idly changing economic system, of a commercial system 
continually becoming more complicated has tended to make 
men fearful of sacrificing any of their prerogatives. This 
has made for what is called “ a sharp cutting of corners.” It 
has resulted in a spirit of unwillingness to go the second 
mile. A man who is over-careful about not doing more 
than his duty will never entirely do it. Jealousy of one’s 
rights militates against the virtue of magnanimity. A soci¬ 
ety in which everybody would strive to get as much as pos¬ 
sible and give the least in return would be a hell upon earth. 
It is more blessed to give than to receive. The more people 
who really believe this, the higher will be the plane of hu¬ 
man conduct. In speaking of his kinsman Dr. Ezra Ripley, 
Emerson said: “He was openhanded, just and generous. 
Ingratitude and meanness did not wear out his compassion; 
he bore the insult, and the next day his basket for the beg¬ 
gar, his horse and chaise for the cripple, were at their door. 
Though he knew the value of a dollar as well as another 
man, yet he loved to buy dearer and sell cheaper than 
others.” Men who are willing to do more than meet the 
irreducible minimum of the standards of straight dealing 
are priceless social assets. Their religon is not of the petty 
bargain-counter brand. It possesses breadth of outlook, 
largeness of sympathy and depth of reality. 


THE STUFF OF LIFE 


To every thing there is a season, and a time to 
every purpose under the heaven. 

Ecclesiastes III, i. 

On a sundial in an old English garden are inscribed these 
words, “ It is later than you think.” All of us in some way 
or other have had this truth impressed upon us. It may 
have been through an unusually revealing glimpse of our¬ 
selves in the mirror, or by means of the aging appearance 
of some of our contemporaries. Perhaps it came from a 
sudden realization that those of a younger generation had 
reached maturity and were stepping into positions of leader¬ 
ship. When it dawns upon us that it is “ later than we 
think ” we remember some of the things that we had once 
confidently hoped to do which are still in the realm of the un¬ 
done. In such an hour we realize, as we have never done 
before, the preciousness of time. We remember some of the 
old copybook maxims like the aphorism of Horace Mann: 
“ Lost somewhere between sunrise and sunset two golden 
hours, set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is of¬ 
fered for they are lost forever.” Or possibly more of us will 
recall Benjamin Franklin’s, “ Dost thou love life? Then do 
not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” 

Sometimes we are prone to regard the epigrammatic wis¬ 
dom of other generations as but the expression of the es¬ 
sence of the commonplace. This may be true. It behooves 
us, however, to keep in mind that much of the prudential 
wisdom of our fathers is not to be dismissed with a few 


207 


208 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


supercilious shrugs. Many a man of superlative endow¬ 
ments has failed to measure up to his possibilities for the 
simple reason that he has never learned how to utilize his 
time. 

Dr. Albert Parker Fitch tells of walking through one of the 
dormitories of an ancient educational institution. The door 
of one of the rooms was open. It revealed an atmosphere 
blue with smoke and a group of disheveled youths lounging 
around a table playing cards for a trivial stake. Two hours 
later Dr. Fitch passed through the same building and 
noticed the same group still engaged in their severe and 
elevating occupation. He thought of the wealth of privilege 
all around: gymnasiums for the body, a library greater than 
that of ancient Alexandria, men and youth seeking the 
noble and gracious things of life, and outside the glory of 
a bracing winter day. On the other hand, here sat this 
band of privileged youth abusing their freedom and leisure 
by imitating grooms of the stable matching coins in the 
harness room. What a picture! And how often it can be 
duplicated! Herbert Spencer enjoyed an occasional game 
of billiards. When he was beaten at the game he enjoyed 
quoting the remark of another member of the Athenaeum 
Club, that excessive skill at this game was evidence of a mis¬ 
spent youth. This somewhat ill-natured comment is by no 
means without truth. The habitual winner of bridge prizes 
has mostly sacrificed her higher interests in becoming adept 
at the shuffling of cards. 

One of the most banal phrases in the English language is 
the expression, “ killing time.” The individual who has to 
seek some way of putting in the hours is an example of 
human maladjustment. Browning makes Rabbi Ben Ezra 
say, “ How good to live and learn.” He who finds it a 


THE STUFF OF LIFE 


209 

problem to dispose of his time is not living; he is merely 
vegetating. All around us are fields of intellectual activity 
which challenge every scintilla of mentality which we 
possess. We cannot, like Francis Bacon, take all knowledge 
to be our province. To keep ourselves moderately informed 
in regard to a few of the ever widening fields of thought 
taxes our capacity to the utmost. This, however, is not all 
of life. On every side of us are good causes which are lan¬ 
guishing because of the lack of man power. In such a 
world the wasting of time is not simply a harmless pecca¬ 
dillo. Henry Thoreau tells us that we cannot kill time 
without injuring eternity. Time is the arbiter of destiny. 
It is the material of which our lives are built. 

Emerson has a short poem which illustrates two ways of 
receiving the gifts which the days bring to us: 

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 

And marching single in an endless file, 

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands, 

To each they offer gifts after his will, 

Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all. 

I in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. 

Of that which the days bring to us are we taking simply the 
transient, the empty and the worthless, or are we receptive 
of the best gifts ? 


OUR LOST SENSE OF SIN 


Were they ashamed when they had committed 
abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, 
neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall 
among them that fall: at the time that 1 visit them 
they shall be cast down, saith the Lord. 

Jeremiah VI, 15. 

When the prophet Jeremiah lived and wrote, the little 
kingdom of Judah had fallen upon tragically evil days. Her 
kings were, for the most part, weak-kneed vassals, utterly 
subservient to the rulers of the stronger powers to the east 
and the west. Her history as a separate kingdom was fast 
drawing to a close. Religiously and ethically matters were 
in every bit as bad a state as they were politically. Judah 
had traveled far from the righteousness of the ancient 
Hebrew faith. The worship of Baal had become more and 
more prevalent. Along with their idolatry came a moral 
degradation. It was a time when righteousness was on the 
scaffold and wrong on the throne, a time of dwarfish vir¬ 
tues and gigantic vices. Jeremiah tells us that conditions in 
the once holy city of Jerusalem were worse than they had 
ever been in the vilest days of Sodom and Gomorrah. 

We must remember that Jeremiah was not hurling his 
malediction at erring men and women who had stumbled 
and fallen. The situation was unspeakably worse than that. 
It was a case of sinning and refusing to acknowledge sin as 
sin, of humanity becoming so sin-hardened that it had lost 
the capacity for shame. The people of Jerusalem and its en- 


210 


OUR LOST SENSE OF SIN 


211 


virons had become so trivial-minded that instead of repent¬ 
ing of their sins in sackcloth and ashes they had made them 
the subjects of banal jokes. This is what Jeremiah had in 
mind when he said: “Were they ashamed when they 
had committed abomination? Nay they were not at all 
ashamed, neither could they blush.’ , 

A life that ignores sin is too superficial to attain to any 
depths of spirituality. A study of the inner life of the 
prophets of the Infinite of all ages evidences this. Augus¬ 
tine, Dante, Luther, Bunyan and Wesley were all deeply 
conscious of the soul-wrecking potency of sin. Bunyan’s 
Pilgrim’s Progress has for centuries been one of the world’s 
“best sellers.” During the author’s own lifetime over a 
hundred thousand copies were sold. The Religious Tract 
Society has translations in seventy languages and dialects. I 
doubt, however, if the book is read widely by the Americans 
of today. But those of you who remember your Pilgrim’s 
Progress recall poor Christian leaning upon his staff as he 
struggled on, bent almost double by the burden of his sins. 
Or another picture may come and go before you, that of 
Christian and Faithful walking through the booths of 
Vanity Fair, turning neither to the right hand nor the left 
and saying to the importunate venders, “We buy the truth 
and sell it not.” One does not have to read many pages of 
Bunyan’s masterpiece in order to find that the inspired 
tinker of Bedford walked with God, ever fearful of falling 
once more into the slough of sin. 

If the presence, or the lack, of a sense of sin can make such 
a difference in the life of a people, a question of far-reaching 
import is: “ How does our own age stand in this regard? ” 
This is worthy of a thoughtful answer. But no discriminat¬ 
ing student of modern life could honestly say that our con- 


212 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


sciousness of sin is especially keen. In his lecture on “ The 
Perils of Progress ” published in his volume Christianity 
and Progress, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick mentions as one 
of the chief perils of today “ a silly underestimate of the 
tremendous power of sin.” Looking at the problem from 
an entirely different point of view, Sir Oliver Lodge airily 
remarks: “ The modern man is not bothering about his sins. 
If he is good for anything he is up and doing.” A com¬ 
paratively recent convivial song contains the lines: 

God is not censorious 

When his children have their fling. 

There is a type of essentially cowardly philosophy which 
takes all sternness away from God. Celestial amiability is by 
no means the only divine attribute. Borden P. Bowne used 
to say that he believed in the fatherhood of God but not in 
the grandfather hood. Joseph Cook once said, “ God cannot 
be an enswathing kiss without also being a consuming fire.” 
General William Booth expressed the thought that the most 
vital gospel was one of “ damnation with the cross at the 
center.” But damnation is not a popular word in this fourth 
decade of the twentieth century. Man’s responsibility to 
God and the eternal consequences of sin are not ideas which 
loom especially large in modern thought. Jeremiah and the 
other Hebrew prophets, with their constant stressing of the 
inevitable stern facts of existence, would not be especially 
popular authors today. There is no glossing over of the 
bitter truth in words like these: “The sin of Judah is 
written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a dia¬ 
mond; it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon 
the horns of the altars.” 

It would be well for our generation to hear some of these 


OUR LOST SENSE OF SIN 


213 

world-shaking truths that thunder across the centuries. Re¬ 
morse and penitence are words that need to be brought back 
into our vocabularies. To confuse evil with good and good 
with evil is to tamper with the foundations of life. Sin is 
more than an ecclesiastical tag. The worst enemy of Thomas 
Henry Huxley never accused him of being a champion of 
orthodoxy, but he admitted that in his Romanes Lecture on 
“ Evolution and Ethics ” he preached “ a very orthodox 
sermon on ‘ Satan the Prince of this World.’ ” He brought 
out the thought that science had demonstrated the truth that 
there are in man the stirrings of the tiger and that humanity’s 
greatest task is to triumph over those qualities which we 
have in common with the beast of the jungle. The universe 
is not automatically progressing to perfection. Evil will 
never be eliminated by any gentle evolutionary process. 
Man’s salvation from sin is the central problem of the ages. 

“ Hopes blighted, vows broken, opportunities lost, inno¬ 
cence betrayed, penitence relapsing, the aged failing; the 
sophistry of misbelief, the wilfulness of doubt, the tyranny 
of passion, the canker of remorse, the wasting force of care, 
the anguish of shame, the agony of disappointment, the 
sickness of despair. . . .” In the presence of all these can 
we ignore the presence of sin? Can we eliminate evil by 
banal phrases or gentle palliatives? But God has not left 
us hopelessly enmeshed in sin. “ Christ Jesus came into the 
world to save sinners.” 

Through all the depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of his cross. 

Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could sound. 


THE HARD-SOILED LIFE 


And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way- 
side, and the fowls came and devoured them up . 

Matthew XIII, 4. 

This is the soil of the pathway, beaten hard by the feet of 
many travelers. Seed thrown here cannot penetrate the sur¬ 
face and lies on the top of the ground until it is eaten by the 
birds or blown away. This represents the soul which has 
become impervious to new truth. It illustrates the tragedy 
of the life of an individual who is so dominated by the habits 
of yesterday that the influences of today make no impression 
upon him. A certain idea courses through a man’s mind. 
If it comes once, it will likely come again and will naturally 
travel the same road. Repetition deepens impression, and 
eventually the path of the mind becomes so hard that no 
new thought can make its way into its beaten soil. Such a 
state of mentality precludes responsiveness to any unfamiliar 
truth. 

Daily routine beats a hard path across our lives. Success 
does not fall as the gentle rain from heaven. It means work¬ 
ing at one’s task over three hundred days a year. The birth- 
stone for most of us is the grindstone. Yet assiduous de¬ 
votion to one type of work, commendable as it may be, 
inevitably causes a narrowing of interests and a limiting of 
horizons. It is hard to talk about anything else to a man 
whose business is his whole life. A newspaper in the Middle 
West tells of a coal dealer who, at each meal, entertained his 
family with discussions of his business. They had coal three 
214 


THE HARD-SOILED LIFE 


2I 5 


times a day for seven days in the week. At last his wife 
decided to adopt heroic measures. One evening, as the 
family waited for dessert, the maid came into the room with 
the usual dishes and upon every plate was a shiny lump of 
coal. The article did not say whether or not the cure was 
effective. But if that man separated himself from his busi¬ 
ness long enough to go to church the preponderance of 
probability is that while his pastor tried to preach the gospel 
to him he thought in terms of coal. There are those who 
have ears but do not hear. 

Another reason for a lack of spiritual responsiveness is 
that time breeds a reverence for the familiar. What we 
have heard many times we are prone to look upon as the 
faith delivered to the saints for all times. Most of us are 
inclined to prostrate ourselves before the throne of prece¬ 
dent. “ The Calf Path,” by Sam Walter Foss, preaches a 
sermon with an applicability to many lives. You remember 
the story of the calf wabbling home through the primeval 
wood, leaving behind him a crooked trail which was first 
taken up by a lone dog and then by a bellwether sheep lead¬ 
ing his flock behind. And from that day there was a path 
in the woods. 

This forest path became a lane, 

That bent and turned and turned again; 

The years passed on in swiftness fleet, 

The road became a village street; 

And this, before men were aware, 

A city’s crowded thoroughfare. 

And soon the central street was this 
Of a renowned metropolis. 


216 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


And men two centuries and a half 
Trod in the footsteps of the calf. 

Each day a hundred thousand route 
Followed this zigzag calf about. 

It is easy to walk in calf-paths. It is hard to blaze new trails. 
A self-protective conservatism causes us to venerate the 
familiar and look askance upon the unfamiliar. We forget 
that the radicalism of yesterday is the conservatism of today. 
On one occasion a young man who had fallen in love was 
afraid to ask the momentous question and confided his pre¬ 
dicament to his father, who said: “ Why, my boy, I am 
ashamed of you. Suppose I’d been afraid to ask your 
mother? ” Then the youth displayed anything but a high 
degree of intelligence by saying: “You only had to ask 
mother, but I have to ask a strange girl.” 

We cannot subsist upon the spiritual accumulations of our 
ancestors. Each generation must of truth work out its own 
salvation. Neither can we face the issues of life in the light 
of what we learned twenty years ago. A lack of responsive¬ 
ness to new light and new truth always means cessation of 
growth and ultimate deterioration. Unless we keep our 
hearts and minds receptive, God has no chance in our lives. 
Without plasticity, growth of any kind is impossible. If 
spiritual seed falls upon routine-beaten soil, it is sown in 
vain. 


THE MENACE OF THE UNSTABLE 


Some fell upon stony places, where they had not 
much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because 
they had no deepness of earth: 

And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and 
because they had no root they withered away. 

Matthew XIII, 5, 6. 

The first soil mentioned in the Parable of the Sower repre¬ 
sents the life not sufficiently susceptible to influence; the 
second typifies the character which is too easily impressed. 
People of this type are described in the words of the harsh, 
selfish Duke in Browning’s “My Last Duchess”: 

She liked whate’er 

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 

Men and women of such a caliber are to an unusual degree 
the products of their environment. They receive impres¬ 
sions quickly but do not retain them long. Like the cha¬ 
meleon they reflect the color of their background. They are 
inclined to quote with an air of wisdom platitudes like, “ If 
people do not do this they are out of everything ” or “ One 
must keep up with the times.” 

To be hospitable to new ideas is commendable, but any 
virtue carried to excess becomes a fault. The thin-soiled 
individual is easily influenced for good but is just as readily 
impelled to evil. In time of a revival it is not hard to get 
him to take a very positive stand, but as soon as the light of 
conspicuousness ceases to shine and the community falls 
217 


2l8 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


back into its old routine, his religious life becomes tepid and 
perfunctory. Possibly the best description of the thin-soiled 
life is found in the epistle of James: “ For he that wavereth 
is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. 
For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of 
the Lord; a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” 
“Everybody does it” is the contemptible excuse of the 
coward. As a rule the person who makes such a statement 
is uttering a falsehood in defense of questionable conduct. 
The term “ everybody ” is made to take in entirely too much 
territory. There are always those who stand for principle 
in spite of the crowds that are going in the wrong direc¬ 
tion. But the fact that others are deviating from the path 
of rectitude is no excuse for one’s going in the wrong direc¬ 
tion. 

Yet definite, clear-cut principles are never to be mini¬ 
mized. Especially are they needed in a time of intellectual 
and ethical chaos. Those of us who have watched the 
changing currents of the past thirty years know that we are 
much more confused than our fathers were. Right or 
wrong, they were very certain as to their convictions. We 
have seen many old standards discarded and often we have 
developed no new convictions to put in their places. With¬ 
out fixed beliefs we are the prey of every passing wind of 
doctrine. There is no pseudo-philosophy so superficial or 
so inane that it cannot muster its horde of devotees. The 
surest way to cause an individual to succumb to temptation 
is to undermine his beliefs in regard to vital questions. 
Without definite convictions there can be no righteous liv¬ 
ing. A spineless, neurotic, erratic liberalism is not a good 
foundation for any life. 

It was to the thin-soiled that Hosea was speaking when he 


THE MENACE OF THE UNSTABLE 2ig 

uttered the pathetically eloquent words: “ O Ephraim, what 
shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I say unto thee? 
For your goodness is as a morning cloud and as the early dew 
it goeth away.” Goodness of this kind has little to commend 
it. Every life must face temptation. We cannot shut our¬ 
selves away from the forces of evil. Either we master them, 
or they rule us. A few vague good intentions combined with 
two or three pious emotions can never take the place of vital, 
deeply rooted principles. Shallow soil does not produce an 
abundant harvest. 


THE CROWDED LIFE 


And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung 
up, and cho\ed them. 

Matthew XIII, 7. 

Of the three bad soils mentioned in the Parable of the 
Sower, the third is preferable. It is productive, but the good 
seed has no chance. The soil is already crowded with 
weeds. To speak of the complexity of modern life is to 
utter a truism. Any man who studies the trends of his gen¬ 
eration knows that we live in a time when the machinery 
of life is geared tremendously high. Several years ago the 
street-railway authorities of an American city tried to re¬ 
lieve the crowded subway traffic by inaugurating an adver¬ 
tising campaign calling the attention of the public to the 
light, air and scenery of the surface lines. The effort was a 
failure because in the mind of most Americans no advan¬ 
tage can compensate for the lack of speed. In his novel, 
The Great Hunger, Bojer makes one of his characters say: 
“ Where are we going that we are in such a hurry ? ” 
Goethe’s motto, “ Without haste, without rest ” meets with 
little response today. Speed is regarded as a virtue for its 
own sake. We look back with pity upon the oxcart days of 
our ancestors. 

This parable in its reference to the thorns and briers is 
not speaking of the ordinary activities of life. They are en¬ 
tirely commendable, but thorns and briers are useless. The 
soil of our lives becomes crowded with trivialities. There 
have been times when large segments of the American 


220 


THE CROWDED LIFE 


221 


people have failed to appreciate the joy of living. Our 
Puritan heritage tended to make our fathers look upon 
pleasure as something closely related to sin. Of course, 
there have always been those who have followed the prim¬ 
rose path of folly rather than the steep and narrow road of 
duty. Within the past few years, however, there has been 
a rather general reaction against the forthright, uncom¬ 
promising Puritanism of an earlier day. Many would find 
their creed of life expressed in the words of the Roman poet, 
Horace: “ Today let us enjoy wine and love: hopeless death 
awaits us: there is not a day to be lost.” One of the results 
of this wave of anti-Puritanism has been an inordinate craze 
for adventitious pleasures. There is an abnormal appetite 
for thrills. 

Professor William Lyon Phelps says: “ I am sorry for all 
who have to seek happiness outside of office hours. The 
blue bird should not require an expensive and elaborate 
equipment for his pursuit.” Yet it seems that the number 
of those who look upon their working hours as vanity and 
vexation of spirit is not growing smaller. This may be due 
to the fact that modern industry and commerce tend to 
make men simply cogs in massive machines. Uninspiring 
routine naturally develops an abnormal appetite for the un¬ 
usual and the spectacular. Yet there is another reason which 
cannot be ignored. The chief incentive to the seeking of 
trivial pleasures is bankruptcy of soul. 

Not every pastime is recreation. The art of recreation is 
an intrinsic part of the well-ordered life. It is one of the 
master forces of civilization. Anyone doing his share of 
the world’s work needs recreation, but there is something 
radically wrong with the person who has to seek some 
method of “ putting in the time.” Some amusement is bene- 


222 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


ficial and some deteriorating. It can, however, be said with 
assurance that if an amusement “ weakens the family, cor¬ 
rupts morals, sneers at religion, hinders education, or tends 
towards the defiance of the law or the creation of race or 
national prejudice, delays the realization of a Christian 
order, it should receive the fearless condemnation of social 
religion.” 

It is indeed sad to see a life of noble possibilities frittered 
away in the empty pursuit of nothing. Every gardener 
knows that it is not easy to keep weeds from growing. It 
is every bit as hard to keep them from crowding out the 
better crops in the soil of our lives. There is not a com¬ 
munity in our whole country which does not contain its 
examples of the tragedy of the weed-grown life. 


THE GOOD HEARER 


But others fell into good ground, and brought forth 
good fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold 
and some thirty fold. Who hath ears to hear let 
him hear . 

Matthew XIII, 8, 9. 

The good soil signifies the good hearer. The Parable of the 
Sower does not have to do with preaching the gospel but 
hearing it. Poor hearers have done vastly more mischief 
than poor preachers. Many times Christ said, “ Take heed 
how ye hear.” Hearing means something more than trans¬ 
lating acoustic vibrations into terms of consciousness. It 
has to do with our capacity to receive truth. The analogy 
between the soil and human life must not be followed too 
closely. This type of quibbling interpretation has tended 
to mystify the grand simplicity of the parables. No soil is 
to be blamed for its condition. But man is responsible for 
the condition of the soil of his life, for his attitude toward 
new truth. Shakespeare makes the “lean and hungry” 
Cassius say: 

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars 
But in ourselves that we are underlings. 

The fault is most decidedly in ourselves if we allow traits to 
develop which close the gateways of our souls and make us 
unresponsive to the potency of truth. To be unreceptive is 
to sin against our own minds and hearts. And “he that 
sinneth against himself sinneth against me.” As we walk 
223 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


224 

the paths of earth, everywhere the seed of God falls upon 
the soil of our lives. The art of right living ultimately is a 
matter of receiving the divine truth. 

According to the parable the good soil is that which is 
mellow, deep and clean. It is for us to say whether our lives 
shall possess these characteristics or not. Man is not the 
passive product of forces over which he has no control. 
Heredity is a vital factor of existence. But this does not 
mean that a man’s character and personality are entirely 
determined by his ancestors. Potent as heredity is, it is not 
the master of any man unless he voluntarily surrenders to it. 
Neither are we pliable creatures in the hands of environ¬ 
ment. Every individual has in him many potential men, 
and it is for him to say which shall dominate. Some of the 
elements of our environment we must accept and others re¬ 
ject. If the wickedly trivial occupies the soil of our lives, it 
is because we ourselves have willed that it should do so. 

The Parable of the Sower simply asks that we give the 
truth of God a chance to take root and grow. God sends 
the seed, but we are responsible for the state of the soil. In 
practically every rural community there is naturally good 
land which is unfertile because of inefficient cultivation. 
On the other hand, many a barren spot has been made pro¬ 
ductive by patient and skilful labor. 

It is not hard to develop traits which will make us in¬ 
capable of receiving truth. The ceaseless routine, almost 
unavoidable, may beat the soil of our minds into a worn 
path before we know it. Or without realizing the presence 
of danger we may acquire a superficial adaptability which 
will eventually make us incapable of devotion to any deeply 
rooted principle. Or the petty and the transient may with 
the passing years grip us more firmly until we lose all re- 


THE GOOD HEARER 


225 

sponsiveness to the fundamental and eternal. On the tomb 
of John Richard Green is inscribed the epitaph, “ He died 
learning.” As long as we “ take heed how we hear ” it is 
possible for us to learn. 


THE BASIC VIRTUE OF INTELLECTUAL 
INTEGRITY 


He loveth righteousness and judgment. 

Psalm XXXIII, 5. 

Like everybody else who has ventured to publish books I 
have had some favorable reviews and some decidedly other¬ 
wise. I have, nevertheless, seen only two reviews of any 
product of my pen to which I have had reason to object as 
unfair. One was so obviously the work of a bungler that 
there was no reason why I should take it seriously. The 
other, however, was ill-natured, unfair and misleading to 
such a degree that it rankled for a long time. I am glad to 
report that I threw in the waste basket the caustic letter 
which I wrote to the reviewer, suggesting that he should at 
least have read the index of the book. But this is not the 
whole story. A few weeks ago a book for review came to my 
desk. When I opened it I was astonished to see that it was 
written by the critic whose notice of my own volume had so 
aroused my ire. I must confess that when I saw the name of 
the author my heart gave an unregenerate leap and I thought, 
“ The Lord has delivered him into my hands.” Before I 
had completed my review, however, my literary conscience 
intervened, and I decided that it was my duty to do my 
utmost to discuss that work as though I had never had any 
personal experience with its author. Yet it was not easy. 
To be intellectually honest is as difficult a task as confronts 
a man. Personal likes and dislikes and other adventitious 
elements are so prone to obtrude and warp our judgments. 

226 


THE BASIC VIRTUE OF INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY TT] 

Moffatt in his translation of Psalm XXXIII makes the 
second half of the fifth verse read: “ He has a love for 
honesty and justice.” Although the matter of being honest 
is often looked upon as a very simple matter, it is highly 
complicated and beset with many impeding circumstances. 
Personal friendships intervene. In our desire to be loyal we 
ascribe to those whom we personally like qualities which 
they do not possess. In spite of the fact that this tendency is 
vitiating to our integrity, it may have its admirable side. 
Unfortunately it is generally, if not invariably, accompanied 
by an inclination to refuse to admit any virtue whatever on 
the part of a person whom we dislike. 

To substitute emotion for thought is to pervert one’s 
judgments. An especially contemptible manifestation of 
this is seen in the bigoted partisan who refuses to recognize 
the faults of anyone on his own side of the political fence 
or the merits of anybody in the opposing party. The same 
warping of honesty manifests itself in other ways. Self- 
interest enters into our estimates of humanity. Those who 
treat us affably are likely to receive our approval no matter 
how low their standards may be. Many a politician of the 
lowest principles has been permitted to prey upon the public 
for years because of an affable manner and the general dis¬ 
tribution of favors. “ He may be corrupt, but I can stand 
that as long as he works for a high tariff on steel,” said a 
man of ostentatious ecclesiastical activity whose income was 
dependent upon tariff favors. 

To be intellectually honest is so difficult that sometimes we 
are impressed that genuine integrity is the rarest of virtues. 
Yet it is the cornerstone of society. The worth of an indi¬ 
vidual is determined by the honesty of his judgments. The 
continual perverter of the truth to suit his own interest 


228 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


eventually becomes a personified falsehood. No man can 
safely tamper with the truth. He who abuses it loses the 
power to recognize it. The liar frequendy first deceives 
himself. False judgments sap the power of the soul. The 
whited sepulcher of hypocrisy has become what he is be¬ 
cause of his compromising with the laws of rectitude. 
Francis Bacon says: “The inquiry of truth, which is the 
love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which 
is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the en¬ 
joying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.” With¬ 
out a dominating love of truth and a willingness to face it, 
an individual can never attain moral maturity. This means 
that he must clear his mind of prejudices, antipathies, am¬ 
bitions and personal predilections and do his utmost to learn 
the facts of life and their implications. The failure to do 
this disables the mind. And a warped mind means a 
warped soul. 


A PROSAIC VIRTUE 


For ye have need of patience. 

Hebrews X, 36. 

In the illustrated copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress , 
which I read and re-read in the days when my favorite posi¬ 
tion in reading was to lie on my stomach with my heels in 
the air, the picture that fascinated me the most was that of 
the children, Passion and Patience. I am compelled to con¬ 
fess that although Passion was supposed to be a wicked little 
rascal, he in some way or other appealed to me the more. 
There he sat with flashing eyes, pouting mouth and 
clenched fists. Patience, on the other hand, wore an artifi¬ 
cially angelic expression. As I visualize the picture across 
the gulf of more than forty years, I must confess that the 
artist gave poor little Patience a rather inane simper. This, 
however, was the artist’s fault rather than Bunyan’s. Pa¬ 
tience is not mentioned as one of the virtues of medieval 
theology. In general, it is looked upon as a weak passivity 
rather than as one of the heroic virtues. Yet it is a quality 
upon which harmonious, happy human relation absolutely 
depends. 

Dr. Charles F. Thwing once said: “ College men, when 
they fail, though in fact they seldom do fail, fail for one of 
two reasons, either lack of moral fiber or inability to get on 
with their fellows.” A person who lacks patience with 
others can never hope to live peaceably with other human 
beings. Patience is the best of antidotes for touchiness, can¬ 
tankerousness and super-acidity of disposition. Without it 
there cannot exist a social mind, a social heart or a social will. 


229 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


23O 

Each one of us has his special weakness. Anyone who 
sees us at close range will discover it sooner or later. We all 
make demands upon the patience of those who live with us 
and work with us. The fact that we all stand in need of 
patience makes it highly apparent that we should show it to 
others. We eventually become authorities in regard to the 
limitations of our associates, but not always do we know of 
the palliating circumstances in the background. Any indi¬ 
vidual is a conglomeration of mysteries to everybody else. 
As a result we are guilty of many injustices in our associa¬ 
tions with our fellow mortals. 

Dr. John Hutton tells of a Scottish professor who told a 
student to stand up and “ construe.” The student did so, 
holding his book in his left hand. “ Hold your book in the 
other hand,” said the professor. Apparently paying no at¬ 
tention, the student continued to read. “ Do you hear me, 
sir ? ” thundered the teacher. The student had stopped 
reading, but stood with his head down, holding the book 
as before. “ Sir! ” shouted the teacher. Then the student 
raised his other arm, showing that his hand had been cut 
off. According to the story, the professor did all that a man 
could to right the wrong. He rushed from his desk and 
going down on his knees before the boy in the presence of 
the class, besought forgiveness. 

Many a time, if we knew all the circumstances we would 
pity instead of condemn. As we look back over the years 
that are gone, most of us can think of harsh judgments 
which we have made of those who were doing their utmost 
to meet life’s responsibilities. If a man is doing his very 
best it is ignoble to criticize him because of his limitation. 
Impatience is often the sin of the ten-talented. Alert- 
minded, highly gifted men and women are impatient of 


A PROSAIC VIRTUE 


231 

those whose mental processes are slower. Among the most 
clever, skilful and stimulating letter writers in the English 
language was Jane Welsh Carlyle, and her gifted husband 
was almost her equal in this field. The brilliant letters of 
both of the Carlyles, nevertheless, breathe an unhealthy con¬ 
tempt for humanity. It seemed impossible for this strong- 
minded, keen-visioned, scintillating couple to respect those 
with but one or two talents. To praise the person of great 
gifts and sneer at the one with small endowment is a 
particularly unadmirable trait. Frequently our laughter is 
tinged with a spirit of contempt for a handicap for which 
the one at whom we sneer is not to the slightest degree re¬ 
sponsible. Some men and women who wear good clothes 
and occupy positions of influence are so debased that their 
only idea of humor is laughter at somebody else’s discom¬ 
fort. No one is more worthy of the patience of others than 
he who struggles along trying to do his work in the world 
faithfully, although he has but one talent. 

Patience is not so commonplace a characteristic as it looks 
to the superficial observer. Virtues and vices do not exist 
in completely separated compartments of a life. For exam¬ 
ple, tolerance and patience walk hand in hand. The man 
without sympathy is never patient. Impatience and ir¬ 
ritability are almost synonymous terms. Arrogance and 
selfishness are responsible for a considerable part of the im¬ 
patience by means of which people persecute their depend¬ 
ents and other associates. Most emphatically do we all have 
need of patience. Without it we are failures as human 
beings. 


AFTER THE DELUGE 


1 will restore to you the years that the locust hath 
eaten. 

Joel II, 25. 

The interpretation of three chapters which make up the 
prophecy of Joel has given scholars a disproportionate 
amount of trouble. The older writers made him one of the 
first of the literary prophets. Modern scholarship, however, 
has come to the conclusion that he lived in the later, post- 
exilic times of Ezra and Nehemiah. He tells of a locust 
plague in Judah which was so terrible that it was a major 
calamity. Some students of prophecy have interpreted Joel’s 
account of this plague as an allegory. Dr. Pusey, leader of 
the famous Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century, 
says: “No, it is clear to me now that they are not literal 
locusts.” On the other hand, George Adam Smith expresses 
his conclusion in the words, “ The allegorical interpreta¬ 
tion is therefore untenable.” This opinion is the one which 
is now generally accepted. 

Joel was a dramatic poet and his description of the on¬ 
slaught of these devastators of the land is colorful and grip¬ 
ping: “ A fire devoureth before them; behind them a flame 
burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and 
behind them a desolate wilderness: yea, and nothing shall 
escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance 
of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. Like the 
noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, 
like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble.” 

232 


AFTER THE DELUGE 


2 33 

In the presence of this destruction the prophet calls upon 
the people to turn to God, to rend their hearts and not their 
garments. He tells them that if they had learned aright 
the lessons of their bitter experience, better days would come 
again. He promises them the return of their material pros¬ 
perity and a revival of spirituality. This message of Joel 
means infinitely more to us than it did ten years ago. We 
have suffered no far-reaching visitation of physical disaster. 
Our locust-eaten years have been those of economic and 
social calamity. 

In most of our loudly uttered lamentations we have failed 
to face the truth that the tragedy of our national life oc¬ 
curred not since 1929 but in those days before it, the days of 
shrieking, high-powered salesmanship, of the deification of 
gadgets and knickknacks, of the measuring of prosperity 
in terms of mechanism. The other day a man said to me, 
in speaking of some of the poverty around us, “ If we could 
only go back to where we were ten years ago.” No greater 
calamity could happen to us than to return to the years 
when everybody was trying to get rich by means of the 
miraculous powers of the stockmarket, when renegade 
clergymen hung over the ticker by hours, when college pro¬ 
fessors sat reading the stock reports in library and chapel, 
when “ service ” meant the ability to “ get in on the ground 
floor ” and secure a paying business for some favored indi¬ 
vidual or corporation, when social life was trivially selfish 
and business life rapaciously dishonest. Defiance of mo¬ 
rality and scorn of idealism were the most marked charac¬ 
teristics of the period. 

A recent text in American history has characterized those 
post-war days of the tired liberal, of discarded moral stand¬ 
ards, of stupid extravagance and dishonest public officials 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


2 34 

as “ the bottom of the abyss.” Our affliction then, although 
most of us did not know it, was a plague worse than the 
inundations of locusts. At the best, the nineteen-twenties 
was a period of chaotic emotions and disordered thinking. 
How busy we were! Yet much of our busyness was like 
that of the Chicago lawyer who rushed out of his office and 
into the elevator and then started pell-mell down the street. 
When he had gone half a block he stopped and asked him¬ 
self, “ Where was I going ? ” Under such circumstances the 
nation was giddily rushing toward inevitable catastrophe. 
Carlyle once said that if the French Revolution had not 
come he could not have believed in God. If the luxurious, 
hard-boiled, shallow, corrupt, essentially atheistic third 
decade of the century had not been followed by calamity, 
the situation would have been contrary to what the genera¬ 
tions have found to be the fundamental laws of the universe. 
We have paid the price of our national apostasy. 

The Hebrew people in the presence of calamity needed 
two messages, one of repentance and the other of encourage¬ 
ment. The words of the obscure prophet of Judah have a 
special applicability to us. We, too, need to rend our 
hearts. We, too, look forward longingly to a cessation of 
unemployment, suffering and uncertainty. Much as we 
talk about the spiritual blessings of adversity, a degree of 
economic stability is necessary for the development of the 
religious faculties. Bitter, sordid, hopeless poverty is not 
conducive to spirituality. Joel believed that God would 
help Judah recover from the years that the locusts had eaten. 
He meant this both economically and spiritually. Is there 
any reason why we in our occidental land, far away both in 
place and time from the harassed little country of Judah, 
cannot hope that God will help us meet and master our 


AFTER THE DELUGE 


235 

economic difficulties? And Joel’s exhortation to his coun¬ 
trymen to turn their thoughts to the Lord their God is per¬ 
tinent to the sons and daughters of our generation, which 
above all else needs a renaissance of the religion of the 
spirit as we pass out of the locust-eaten years. “And ye 
shall know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I am the 
Lord your God, and none else.” A sense of God’s presence 
in our midst would spiritualize our national life and lift 
us above the pettiness, the sordidness, the laxity and the 
paganism of the locust-eaten years. 


NEW LIGHT IN A BROADENING LIFE 


Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth 
I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But 
in every nation he that feareth him, and wor\eth 
righteousness, is accepted with him. 

Acts X, 34, 35. 

Jesus was a pioneer. He blazed new trails in the ethical 
and spiritual life of his generation. To follow him meant 
to make a decided break with the accepted customs, creeds 
and ideals of the world in which he lived. Slavish idolaters 
of the past would have found it hard to follow him. 

The author of the epistle to the Hebrews says: “ Let us 
run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto 
Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith.” In translating 
this passage the American Revised Version uses “ leader ” 
instead of “ author.” Some of the earlier English theolo¬ 
gians made the passage read, “ the forerunner and perfecter 
of our faith.” Goodspeed has it, “ Jesus, our leader and ex¬ 
ample in faith,” and Moffatt “ the pioneer and perfection of 
faith.” Any interpretation of the character of Jesus is highly 
inadequate which does not take into consideration the fact 
that he was an overthrower of tradition and a pioneer of a 
deeper, richer and truer life. 

The first followers of Jesus had to leave the beaten paths 
of their fathers. They were called upon to discard time- 
honored customs and in many instances think in entirely 
new terms. The fact that Paul, a Pharisee of the strictest 
sect, could become the apostle of freedom from the ancient 
236 


NEW LIGHT IN A BROADENING LIFE 237 

Hebrew law, is in itself evidence of the great distance that 
he had traveled. Adjusting himself to the new order was 
probably much easier for the cosmopolitan Paul than it was 
for the somewhat provincial Peter. Nevertheless, the Rock 
Apostle was a big enough man to respond to the challenge 
of the new. His decision that the Jewish taboo of certain 
foods was no longer of consequence came to him in a 
dream. Dreams, however, cannot be entirely detached from 
our waking life. Sleep is not devoid of spiritual impres¬ 
sions. When Shakespeare put some of the strongest im¬ 
pressions of men in their dreams, he exemplified his minute 
knowledge of the subtleties of human nature. Peter’s 
dream is evidence that he had been thinking about the 
relative values of the old-time Jewish prescriptions. From 
his youth he had been indoctrinated with the idea of the 
innate inferiority of other races. The time that he spent 
with Jesus and the wider contacts of the succeeding years 
had sapped away the vitality of this erroneous belief. As a 
result there came the hour when he could say that he un¬ 
derstood that God welcomed into his kingdom spiritually 
aspiring, right-living men, without any consideration what¬ 
ever of their nationalities. 

For a Jew to give up his beliefs that God was the God of 
Israel only and that many of the requirements of the law 
were inconsequential was to gain a titanic intellectual vic¬ 
tory. It is never easy for a serious-minded person to discard 
deeply entrenched convictions. Yet in an expanding life 
this has to be done. No man leaves school completely 
equipped with the correct views upon every conceivable 
subject. Cocksureness is generally an evidence of limited 
horizons. A college student one Sunday morning heard a 
preacher express several ideas in regard to biblical interpre- 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


238 

tation different from those which he had been taught in 
Sunday school in the country. He was highly indignant 
and decided never again to attend that church. Years 
after, when he knew that the preacher’s view was the one 
accepted almost unanimously by scholarship, he remem¬ 
bered his youthful indignation with a sense of chagrin. 
Although Peter’s idea of the superiority of one race was a 
view which his people had held for ages, it was utterly 
false. It was based on a belittling conception of God. 
Gradually his widening experience and deepening insight 
gave him a broader vision of a deity not circumscribed by 
the boundaries of a petty province. The same spiritual and 
intellectual growth caused him to see that the regulation in 
regard to foods was a minor matter. As his perspective 
changed his ideas became different. Peter caught a new 
vision of truth because the size of his world was increasing. 

The challenge of Jesus, the pioneer, is not a thing of the 
past. His trumpet sounds to the sons and daughters of 
every age. The borders of the empire of truth are not fixed 
for all time. Each generation must face the adventure of 
the unknown. Every life must do some exploring. As the 
years pass by we find something that previously was hidden 
behind the ranges. Phillips Brooks in his Yale Lectures 
gave this advice to young preachers: “Never forget to tell 
the young people that they are to expect more light and 
larger developments of the truth which you give them. 
Oh, the souls which have been made skeptical by the mere 
clamoring of new truth to add itself to that which they have 
been taught to think finished and final! ” Peter was not 
final-minded. Therefore, he learned the tremendous truth 
that “ God is no respecter of persons.” 


THE PREJUDICES OF PROVINCIALISM 


Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, 
better than all the waters of Israel? 

II Kings V, 12. 

When Naaman, the commander of the Syrian armies, went 
to Elisha to be healed of the leprosy, he was disappointed by 
the matter-of-fact way in which the prophet received him. 
Elisha did not even bother to give the Syrian potentate a 
personal interview but simply directed him through his 
servant to bathe seven times in the Jordan. The chronicler 
tells us that eventually Naaman did this and was healed. 
But his first reaction was one of indignation. Not only had 
he himself been treated unceremoniously, but worse than 
this, his national pride had been insulted. Instead of being 
told to bathe in the rivers of his own country he had been 
sent to the comparatively small Jordan. In meeting this 
situation Naaman showed a lack of mental flexibility. He 
was puzzled and offended because Elisha had not func¬ 
tioned as he had expected him to act. Moreover, he could 
not see why any prophet should pass over two perfectly good 
rivers in Syria for one on the border of Israel. 

Naaman had thought so long in terms of Syria that he 
could not conceive of a river or anything else outside of its 
borders being of the slightest consequence. It happens that 
Abana and Pharpar are by no means among the great rivers 
of the world. They are so insignificant that we search most 
maps for them in vain. Their chief merit for Naaman 
was that they were in Syria. That fact in itself created a 
239 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


24O 

prejudice in their favor in the mind of the afflicted leader 
of armies. In his make-up there was a streak of provincial¬ 
ism which prejudiced him in favor of everything in Syria 
and against everything outside of it. This type of pro¬ 
vincialism is not exclusively a matter of geography. Dr. 
Fosdick tells of a narrowly sectarian paper which contained 
the following: “ Baptists have the whole truth. Nobody else 
has. Western Kentucky Baptists come nearer standing for 
the whole truth and all the truth than any other set of Bap¬ 
tists in this round world.” A story is told of a discussion 
of the problems of the multiplicity of denominations. One 
good old sister in what she probably thought was a spirit of 
beautiful tolerance remarked: “ Why must we have so many 
denominations? Why can’t everybody be sensible and be 
a Methodist? ” Those of us who have lived for the last 
half-century have seen the eradication of much of this spirit 
of ignorant bigotry. Unfortunately it has not entirely disap¬ 
peared. There are still religious leaders so deficient in intel¬ 
lectual catholicity that they are more interested in finding 
flaws in the beliefs of their brethren than they are in the 
upbuilding of the kingdom. 

This provincial prejudice is by no means confined to the 
realm of religion. In our day it is probably more marked 
in politics and in social thinking. In some sections of the 
country a preacher takes his ecclesiastical life in his hands 
if he dares even to challenge gently an article of the domi¬ 
nant political creed of the locality. No brand of heterodoxy 
is more likely to make a person the object of persecution 
than deviation from the standpat economic theories which 
have proved so disastrous in our national life. Bunyan, in 
his Holy War, describes Old Mr. Prejudice, angry and ill- 
conditioned, placed by Diabolous as keeper of Ear-gate, ac- 


THE PREJUDICES OF PROVINCIALISM 24I 

companied by sixty entirely deaf assistants. These sixty 
deaf men represent a stroke of the genius of the seventeenth- 
century interpreter of spiritual realities. Prejudice cannot 
hear because it does not want to. 

Most of us are likely to accumulate a plentiful supply of 
prejudices as the years go by. Since prejudice closes the 
mind and heart to light and truth it needs to be strenuously 
combated. Jonathan Edwards in his Diary utters some 
words in this regard which are worth reading and applying: 
“ I observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new 
discoveries, because these discoveries are beside a way of 
thinking that they have long been used to. Resolved, there¬ 
fore, that, if I ever live to years, I will be impartial to hear 
the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them if 
rational, how long soever I have been used to another way 
of thinking. I am too dogmatical; I have too much of 
egotism; my position is always to be telling me of my dis¬ 
like and my scorn.” 

As I study the life of the great protagonist of the iron- 
bound Calvinism of New England, I cannot be absolutely 
sure that Edwards was entirely successful in attaining this 
ideal of tolerant reasonableness. Few of us are. But the 
spirit of justice demands that we do our utmost to face the 
issues of life with minds free from the dogmatism of a pro¬ 
vincialized prejudice. We cannot always agree with the 
other man. We can, however, do our best to understand 
his point of view. An unprejudiced mind and a tolerant 
spirit are characteristics which we must develop for the sake 
of our own integrity of soul and usefulness to society. 


APPRECIATING THE THINGS THAT ARE 
EXCELLENT 


Finally, brethren, whatsover things are true, what - 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if 
there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
thinly on these things. 

Philippians IV, 8. 

“ Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are,” says 
John Ruskin. If we know what a person enjoys we are in¬ 
formed concerning his tastes, his interests and his ideals. 
The pictures upon the walls of a home reveal considerable 
of the inner life of those who selected them. A study of the 
titles of the books which a person takes from a library dur¬ 
ing the course of a few months opens windows into his in¬ 
most mind and heart. An occasional seance of involuntary 
listening to our neighbors’ radios gives us a decidedly defi¬ 
nite knowledge of their tastes, musical and otherwise. The 
type of magazines sold at the news-stands of a city is an 
index to the scope of the intellectual life of its people. What 
would you do, if you could spend a month doing absolutely 
as you pleased ? The answer to this question would tell any 
discriminating man or woman what sort of individual 
you are. 

Whether or not a person is educated is not determined 
by the number of degrees affixed to his name. One of the 
242 


APPRECIATING THE THINGS THAT ARE EXCELLENT 243 

best passages which John Ruskin ever wrote contains the 
following: “And the entire object of true education is to 
make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the 
right things: — not merely industrious, but to love indus¬ 
try— not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not 
merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to 
hunger and thirst after justice.” In an address to the stu¬ 
dents of the University of Bristol, Lord Haldane advised his 
youthful audience to “ cultivate a passion for excellence.” 

What arouses your enthusiasm? Is it the trivial, the 
tawdry, the silly? Do you find pleasure in the flashy, 
blatant, fatuous backwash of life? Are you hungry for 
every passing titillation which relieves the ennui of intel¬ 
lectual and spiritual starvation? What kind of people 
arouse your admiration? Are your heroes invariably the 
accumulators of mammoth fortunes? Is the question, 
“What is he worth?” your yardstick of judgment? Or 
have you the faculty of admiring “ pith of sense ” and solid 
human worth ? Do you know that “ a man’s a man for a* 
that ” ? Can you recognize real excellence when you see it ? 
What would you be, if you could attain your most cher¬ 
ished ambition ? Do you exalt trifles and ignore the weight¬ 
ier aspects of life ? How high does the attainment of moral 
excellence loom in your practical philosophy? William 
Watson, in a poem entitled “ The Things That Are Most 
Excellent,” preaches a sermon which many of us need to 
hear: 


To dress, to call, to dine, to break 
No canon of the social code, 

The little laws that lacqueys make, 
The futile decalogue of mode, 


TEN-MINUTE SERMONS 


244 

How many a soul for these things lives 
With pious passion, grave intent 
While nature careless-handed gives 
The things that are more excellent. 

Moral astigmatism is generally an out-cropping of spir¬ 
itual atrophy. The din of many voices, the clash of a varie¬ 
gated life, the fogs of a bewildered generation, so confuse 
us that God seems remote and inaccessible. The Psalmist 
in words combining poetic beauty and a spiritual insight, 
broad, deep and high, says, “ As the hart panteth after the 
waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My 
soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.” Somewhere 
among the Palestinian hills the poet of long ago heard the 
weird, resounding, harrowing cry of the thirst-oppressed 
stag, and he thought of it when he gave expression to that 
longing of the human soul, the desire of man to receive 
help, sustenance and power by touching in the darkness 
with his feeble, groping hand God’s great right hand. 
Man’s longing for God shows that within us there are im¬ 
planted aspirations which are not circumscribed by time, 
space or human frailty. 



















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